


Running Up That Hill

by idyll



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angels, Constantine Fusion, Demons, Discussion of the past Derek/Kate relationship, Fusion, M/M, Mentions of the Hale House fire, No Character Death, No Werewolves, Past and off screen main character suicide referenced, Suicide, tw suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Derek fights the forces of evil and has no idea how Stiles started working for, or living with, him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vylit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vylit/gifts).



> This is a fusion with Constantine, as prompted by Vylit, but it's not going to be a simple recast of the movie plot. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: There will be mention of a previous Kate/Derek relationship, when Derek was underage. There will also be mention of a previous suicide attempt by Derek.

Something is happening in the city. Derek's not sure what, but his dreams have been even more wretched than usual lately, and he's been called out to help no less than six possessed people in ten days, each one harder than the last.

This most recent one is the worst. It's in the body of a boy around ten and is restrained to a bed with thick rope. It's turned the boy's dark skin a gangrenous shade, and his brown eyes a jaundiced yellow.

"Fuck, I hate when it's kids," Stiles says from just behind Derek's shoulder.

Derek used to try to leave Stiles in the car, because Stiles is just supposed to drive Derek where he needs to go and then wait for him. But there's no leaving Stiles anywhere when he wants to be involved. It really only worked the once. Kind of. Okay it never worked. Stiles is a stubborn little shit, Derek has learned in the year since he cornered Derek on the street and hired himself as Derek's driver. Derek's still not sure how that happened.

Derek nods a greeting at Father Boyd, who called him in, and then strides to the bed, ignoring the ten or so family members gathered in the cramped one bedroom apartment. The scavenger demon inside the kid bares its teeth. "Derek Hale," it hisses at him.

Then it looks past Derek, to where Stiles is, and it cackles and starts thrashing violently. Stiles yelps and stumbles a bit, but Derek just reaches into his jacket for the keyring of small sigils he carries with him. He's resting the third one against the thing's cheek—no luck—when it breaks free of one of the arm restraints.

Derek grabs the arm and leans all of his weight down on it. "Hold him down!" Derek calls out. When Stiles comes to Derek's side, Derek shoulders him back. "No. Go find us a mirror. The larger the better."

Five people come forward to keep the kid's body, infused with the desperate strength of the scavenger, down. It shouldn't be this strong. Shouldn't have this much of a hold in the kid. Not unless it's been in there for a long while.

Derek just barely manages to not be bucked off the thing's arm. Two others aren't so lucky, and the scavenger gets a leg free just as Stiles comes back in with what looks like a mirrored sliding closet door. Boyd takes one side of it and they're about to position it over the kid's body when it frees its other two limbs and throws everyone, including Derek, off of it.

Derek fumbles immediately for the keychain and pushes to his feet. The scavenger grins, too wide and full of rotting teeth, and then launches itself from the bed and right for--

Stiles. It goes right for Stiles. Son of a bitch.

Derek is moving before he realizes he should, scrambling across the room to where the thing has both hands wrapped around Stiles' neck. Stiles is kicking at it with his feet and trying to pry its hands away, but the thing just cackles and spits.

Derek's hands are shaking as he goes through the sigils, fast and frantic, with one hand, the other trying to help Stiles get it off his neck. One sigil after another fails to elicit a response, and Derek is freaking out, but the tenth one, the tenth one makes the thing hiss and rear back. Derek curls his lips into a sneer and presses the copper sigil against its forehead with all of his strength.

He bears the thing back onto the floor, straddles its hips, and snarls, "The mirror."

Boyd managed to keep hold of it when the scavenger tackled Stiles. He brings it over now, stands behind Derek and holds the door panel directly over the scavenger. Derek turns its head with his free hand and smiles meanly when its eyes widen, enchanted and distracted. He levers himself off the kid as he chants the words to free the kid from the scavenger, so that when he finishes the last word he isn't in the way when the scavenger is sucked out of the kid and into the mirror.

Derek tries to get to his feet quickly enough to help Boyd balance the mirror against the impact, but Stiles is already there, wheezing for air, tears streaming down his face, and a ring of bruises coming up around his throat.

Stiles and Boy hold onto the mirror while the scavenger fights them in it. "You can't protect him, Derek Hale."

Derek curls his hands into fists and glares. "Break it."

Just before Stiles and Boyd smash the mirror against a walls, shattering it to pieces, the scavenger hisses something that starts with a Z sound but is completely incomprehensible to Derek. Stiles, though, goes wide-eyed and scared.

The family members rush forward to embrace the kid and to thank Derek and Stiles. Derek looks at the way Stiles is pale with shock and leads him out of the apartment. Honestly, he's glad for the reason to avoid the teary gratitude. He's never quite sure what he's supposed to do in the face of it.

Outside of the building, Stiles leans against the car while Derek talks to Boyd, who followed them out.

"Is the kid in your parish?" Derek asks.

Boyd nods, face troubled. "He took Communion two days ago, Derek."

Derek blinks. If the scavenger was in there that short of a time, and was that strong, it wasn't just hitching a ride. It was trying to come through. "Fuck."

*

Derek takes Stiles' keys and drives them away. Stiles doesn't argue which speaks volumes to how crappy he must be feeling; Stiles can, and has, argued with Derek about practically everything, the more ridiculous and mundane the better.

Stiles is also strangely quiet on the ride. It could be because of his throat, but Derek thinks it has to be about whatever the scavenger said right before it got sent back to hell. Derek doesn't ask during the drive, or even during the ride up the old freight elevator to the loft.

Derek's not sure how Stiles ended up living with him. It just sort of happened about a month after Stiles hired himself, and Derek didn't realize it until he went to brush his teeth one morning and saw the second toothbrush on the counter. He woke Stiles, who was contorted awkwardly on the couch that was his bed, and held the toothbrush out like an accusation. All Stiles did was take it and mutter, "Didn't realize you were so sensitive to morning breath, dude."

"Don't call me dude," Derek said, and Stiles stumbled towards the bathroom. Derek let it go.

They go through the door and Derek strips off his leather jacket, tosses it over the back of a chair, and points Stiles in the direction of the kitchen. "Sit."

When Derek turns around from grabbing the first aid kit out of a cabinet, Stiles is perched on the counter, head bowed. Derek touches his chin with two fingers, gently urges his head up and back. The bruising already looks bad, and will look even worse before it starts getting better.

Derek soaks a cloth in diluted witch hazel and steps closer. Stiles parts his knees, eyes lowered. Derek folds the cloth and holds it carefully across the bruising. He moves the cloth up and down as gently as he can, to rub the liquid in. After a bit, he sets aside the cloth and dries off Stiles' skin, then reaches for a flexible cold pack. Stiles wraps his fingers around Derek's wrist to hold him off.

"Let me get those scratches on your face, first," he says, his voice a little raspy and dry-sounding.

Derek starts, one hand reaching up to his face. He grimaces when he touches them. Stiles bats his hand away. "Stop that. I'm already grossed out wondering what that thing might have done with the kid's hands, and what could be gouged into your skin."

Derek rolls his eyes, sets the ice pack aside, and shifts the kit so that Stiles can reach it easily. Stiles pulls out what he needs, and Derek turns his head to the side so that Stiles can sweep a cotton ball soaked in peroxide across the scrapes. He hisses through his teeth and Stiles smirks. 

"Big bad demon fighter," Stiles teases.

Derek glowers. "Shouldn't you not talk?"

Stiles' smirk spreads into a grin. "It's not that bad. Between me and you, the thing couldn't get a hard enough grip to do as much damage as it could have."

Stiles tosses the cotton ball on the counter and takes out a tube of ointment and a gauze pad. His touch is soft as he applies the ointment to the scratches, but Derek balks when he reaches for tape and another pad.

"I won't make you leave the loft with the bandage on your face, but you need to cover it up for now."

Derek sighs. "I really wish you weren't friends with a doctor."

Actually, he wishes that for more than one reason. Lydia does not approve of Stiles being involved in this shit (and how she's aware of it, Derek doesn't know) and blames Derek. She's especially vitriolic towards him whenever she has to treat Stiles for something beyond his and Derek's basic capabilities. When it's Derek she has to treat, she's meanly smug and hard-handed. 

Stiles rolls his eyes and rips off a piece of tape. "Yeah, because an infection on your face is the fashion accessory of the season."

When the scratches are bandaged, Derek lifts Stiles from the counter by his hips and sets him on his feet. "Go change."

While Stiles is in the bathroom, Derek strips himself down and pulls on a pair of sweat pants. He doesn't bother with a shirt, never does. Stiles comes out in a pair of shorts and a worn t-shirt and Derek presses the ice pack into his hand as he passes. "On the couch, keep your head elevated and take it off--"

"After ten minutes," Stiles finishes. "I know. I was there for the first aid course Lydia gave us. Relax."

Stiles settles down with his laptop and pulls up an episode of Battlestar Galactica. It seems to be his comfort TV show, which makes no sense because Derek thinks it's the most depressing thing ever made.

It's almost eight at night, too early for sleeping, and so Derek settles himself at the rickety table between the kitchen and living areas and busies himself with filling up small, portable containers with holy water from giant jugs that line the walls. He glances up at Stiles now and then, notices the pull of his brows and the way he chews nervously on his thumb.

Near to ten, Stiles puts the laptop aside and goes for the bookshelves that surrounds the arched window at the back of the room. Stiles' collection of books were brought into the loft one box at a time and were originally stacked around the couch. After Derek tripped over a pile and sprained his ankle, he told Stiles to do something with them or he'd take them out back and burn them.

Stiles came home two days later with a bunch of wood and power tools. Watching him try to build a bookcase was frustrating and amusing for Derek, and also the reason why Lydia forced first aid lessons on them. Derek waited until he went to visit Scott for a weekend, then disassembled the rickety, lopsided monstrosity Stiles had "built" and which leaned precariously against the wall at a sixty degree angle. 

It only took him a few hours to make the shelves and install them around the window. Stiles didn't stop smiling for days and Derek made himself scarce due to not knowing how to deal with Stiles' pleased reaction.

Derek has moved on from holy water to cleaning his guns. He finishes the last, puts them up, and moves to sit in a chair by the sofa that Stiles is stretched out on. Stiles has the ice pack back on and is yawning as he turns the pages of a book.

"Stiles." Stiles looks up briefly, then starts chewing on his thumbnail again, the book falling closed on his lap. "What did it say. What was that word."

Stiles fidgets and then sighs and drags a hand down his face. "It said Zdzisława. It's my name. My real name."

Today wasn't the first time Derek's heard something say that word, say Stiles' true name. Derek sucks in a breath. "Get dressed, we're going to see Deaton."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Important!** Trigger Warnings for this Chapter:  
>  1\. References to a previous Kate/Derek relationship when he was underage. The circumstances are the same as in canon.  
> 2\. Cancer  
> 3\. Mention of the Hale fire and related deaths.

Deaton's club is in the warehouse district, down an ill-lit dead-end alley that, remarkably, is always clear of trash. There's a large unmarked metal door, and on the other side of that is a set of crumbling concrete steps.

Derek leads the way, Stiles following behind with his head bowed over his phone. A bouncer bars the way into the club's entrance. He holds up an oversized card, its back facing Derek. 

Derek marshals his talent, narrows his eyes, says, "Mouse in a maze."

The bouncer reaches for another card and holds it out. Derek elbows Stiles, who answers, without looking up, "Cat in a basket."

Stiles puts the phone away as soon as the bouncers lets them through the velvet rope. Derek straightens his leather jacket and automatically reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes, which haven't been there in months. 

Stiles holds out a piece of gum with one hand and claps him on the shoulder with the other. "Stay strong. Remember why you quit."

Derek glares at him. "Because you kept flushing them down the toilet and pretty much made me?"

Stiles smiles sunnily and wiggles the gum. "Healthy living and clean lungs." 

Derek takes it resentfully, unwraps it angrily, and shoves it into his mouth with a scowl.

They stand shoulder to shoulder looking into the main room of the club to get a feel for the atmosphere before delving in. 

The club is dim and eerily lit, with low pulsing music playing. The bar along the side wall doesn't have an empty seat, the booths on the opposite wall are filled, and all of the tables in the center of the floor are being used.

Derek can see which of the beings are part demonic, and which are part angelic. He's been able to see since he was a kid, was horrified by the way some faces, when seen from the corner of his eye, warped and twisted into something horrific, and how others were hallowed and silhouetted with wings.

There's an equal number of demon and angel half-breeds tonight, which is a bit unusual. Normally, the demon half-breeds outnumber the angel by a large margin. 

"Derek. There are humans _everywhere_."

Derek looks around and then blinks. There are definitely a lot more humans than usual in the club, probably about triple the number.

"Everyone has to see the card to get in, right?" Stiles asks.

"Yeah, no exceptions."

"...that's a lot of gifted people suddenly on the scene."

Derek cracks his neck. "Might not be sudden. We haven't been by in almost two months."

Stiles gives him a look. Yeah, Derek doesn't buy that either.

They walk through the club, on alert but not concerned. Deaton doesn't mess around when it comes to his and the club's neutrality, and no clashing or fighting is allowed between factions. 

Sometimes Derek and Stiles mingle as they go through, identifying half-breed demons to target for deportation back to Hell in the future, or gathering information from the half-breed angels. Tonight, Derek leads them straight to the very back of the club, Stiles peeling off at the last second to get a soda from the bar.

The door to Deaton's office is padded and flush with the wall and doesn't have a handle or knob. Derek stands in front of it, brow furrowed in concentration, and essentially wills Deaton to know he's there.

Three minutes later, Stiles joins him, a glass of soda in his hand and an already chewed up straw sticking out of it.

"What's up?" he asks, stepping up next to Derek and giving the door a glancing look.

Before Derek can answer, the door swings open. Stiles moves to go through, but Derek holds him back and goes first.

Deaton's office is a study in dark reds, some of which appear black. The only light is a hanging fixture from the ceiling, like the kind found over pool tables, only with a red shade and hardly any illumination. 

Deaton is seated behind his enormous mahogany desk when they go in, his clear cut appearance an odd dichotomy to the gender-bending angels and pin striped demons in the club proper.

Deaton's eyes go right to Stiles when they walk in. Most of the time Derek can't read Deaton's expression, even after ten years and countless audiences and counsels. When it comes to Stiles, though, Deaton's mask slips, and Derek can always see a vague sense of confusion on his face. 

"Mr. Stilinski," Deaton says in greeting.

Stiles waves a hand as he chases his straw with his mouth. "Hey, Deaton."

Deaton turns his attention to Derek and his eyes flicker immediately to Derek's chest. Derek shakes his head minutely and Deaton arches a brow but relents with a nod. "Derek Hale. What brings you here?" 

They take seats in front of Deaton's desk, and Derek gets right to business. "Something's happening. I've had three times as many exorcisms in the last two weeks, and today a scavenger de--"

"Soldier," Stiles and Deaton correct him.

Derek rolls his eyes. "Today a _soldier_ demon tried to come through a kid."

"It was really messed up," Stiles says.

Deaton looks woefully unimpressed. "The balance is intact. I can't--"

"I've heard Stiles' name—his true name—come out of the mouths of three possessed people."

Deaton straightens in his chair, eyes suddenly darkening. He sets both palms flat on his desk and stares right at Stiles. "And what is your true name, Mr. Stilinski?"

Stiles freezes, his straw half hanging from his mouth. Deaton continues to stare at him and Stiles leans to the side until his shoulder is touching Derek's. "Um." The straw slips back into his drink. "Zdzisława."

Deaton inhales slowly, like he's forcing himself to remain calm, and exhales through his nose. "That is a female name, Mr. Stilinski."

Derek whips his head around and looks at Stiles, who sighs heavily. "There was a thing, with a family name and a misread sonogram. No one can pronounce it and I go by Stiles anyway, so it's not like it matters."

Deaton's nostrils flare and he's holding himself carefully still. He looks from Derek to Stiles, and then back to Derek. "You need to go to the cathedral and speak with him. Keep me informed and I'll act if circumstances allow."

They wait, but Deaton has nothing further to add, if the way he lowers his head over a ledger on his desk and proceeds to ignore them means anything.

Derek bites his tongue to hold in demands and complaints; neither lead to positive things when it comes to Deaton. He gets to his feet, Stiles following a beat later, preparing to leave. 

"Well, aren't you precious," a voice says from behind them.

Derek freezes and his heart falls somewhere around his stomach. When he turns around, he sees her. Kate. She's as gorgeous as ever on the surface, when Derek isn't really looking at her. When he focuses, though, her face is nothing but a warped skull, with shadowed eye sockets instead of eyes, a jagged, flattened area in lieu of a nose, and thick black lines where veins would be. 

She's wearing a well cut suit, has her hair pulled back in a sleek braid, and is dancing a large caliber bullet across the knuckles of her right hand. Derek remembers that bullet well from so many years ago, remembers her hand on his teenaged one, adjusting the set of his fingers as he tried to make it dance himself. 

When Derek looks away from the bullet, he sees her eying Stiles like he's what she wants for dinner. It makes Derek want to kill her and vomit and cry all at once. Makes him want to cover and hide Stiles so she can never touch or taint him.

Stiles, for all of his regular ridiculousness, has great instincts, however: he skitters away from the hand Kate tries to stroke down his arm and, when Derek reaches out and jerks at his hoodie, moves behind Derek. 

After sending Stiles a flirtatious smile, Kate turns her attention to Derek. She gives him a lewd once over that leaves him feeling dirty and sick. "Oh, Derek _Hale_. You grew up nice, didn't you? All filled out and--" Her tongue flickers out like a snake tasting the air. "--yum." Her eyes dart over his shoulder. "Your boy there is pretty, too, with those lovely amber eyes of his."

"Stay away from him," Derek snarls and reaches into his pocket, intent on grabbing an ampule of holy water to smash in her face right before he deports her back to Hell.

"Enough." Deaton’s voice, though not raised, fills the room and presses painfully against Derek’s chest. He points at Derek and Stiles. "Out. I have another meeting to take."

Derek keeps Stiles behind him, much to Kate’s amusement, then pushes Stiles out of the office first. Kate moves in the blink of an eye, is suddenly next to Derek. "I heard you'd be on your way down soon." She taps two of her fingers against his sternum, eyes glowing, and licks her lips; Derek swallows back a tide of bile. "Didn't think it'd be so fast." She gives him a wink and steps away. "See you soon, baby."

*

"That was vaguely ominous and completely uninformative, as usual," Stiles says when they’re back in the Jeep.

Derek leans against the passenger door, hands clenched in fists on his thighs, and grunts an acknowledgment.

"It's not like I went in there expecting something else," Stiles goes on, "but once I saw him actually react to my name I thought he might, you know, be helpful."

Derek wants to stay quiet, wants to let Stiles fill the silence until he can't feel Kate's hands on him, her body against his, but Stiles is already watching Derek with worry from the corner of his eye.

"He can't. The rules—the laws—won't let him."

Stiles waves a hand dismissively and then shifts gear. "Yeah, yeah. The accords of the great detente. I know. True angels stay in Heaven, demons in Hell, certain powerful beings were neutered for the sake of peace, yadda yadda." He pulls off the freeway and makes a sound of frustration. "What I want to know is, who decides when the balance is upset? And how do they know? Is there, like, a disturbance in the force that they sense? Or do they react based on information from others?"

Derek sighs in exasperation. "How many times do I have to tell you that I don't know. I'm not like Deaton. I see, that's all. Isn't there anything in your research about it?"

"First of all, the only place to find that information is in the actual Accords, which aren't just laying around in a used bookshop. They're not anywhere but Heaven and Hell, under careful guard." Derek rolls his eyes. "Second of all, you don't just see. You _do_."

Derek doesn't tell him about the mouthful of ash that chokes him every time he sees a half-breed demon, how their screams as he deports them are overlaid with the screams of his family as they burned to death in their home, or how the guilt makes him feel empty and hollow.

"Fine, I _do_. That doesn't give me any insight into Deaton and others like him." Stiles opens his mouth and Derek holds up his hand. "All I can tell you is that in more than ten years, I've never seen Deaton take action of any kind."

Stiles mulls that over as they finish the drive home. 

It's late by the time they get there. Stiles yawns through Derek rubbing some Tiger Balm on the bruises at his neck, the stumbles to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

When it's Derek's turn in the bathroom, he closes the door behind him easily and then leans heavily against the sink, his heart pounding crazily in his chest, his hands shaking until he clenches the edge of the sink to force them still.

He doesn't look at his reflection, hasn't been able to do so in years, just closes his eyes against the image of himself in the mirror and lets the events of the day roll through him and overtake him. In the end, he's shaky and sweating and pale, and he's left with a tidal wave of fear for what's coming, for how it involves Stiles.

*

In the morning, Derek starts a pot of coffee after he's dressed, and then urges Stiles' oddly contorted body into a relatively normal position on the sofa. Stiles is only five years younger than Derek, but in his sleep he looks like a teenager, looks around the age Derek was when he met Kate. Derek settles a blanket over Stiles, grabs the keys to the Camaro, and leaves Stiles sleeping.

*

"I could kill you for this," Lydia says, her voice barbed and serrated. She slams a folder down on the conference table at which they're sitting and glares daggers at Derek. "Do you know what this is going to do to Stiles? Do you?"

Derek stares back at her flatly. "Wasn't I supposed to be meeting with the oncologist?"

Lydia narrows her eyes. "Do not push me, Derek. It's bad enough you dragged him into Hell on Earth--"

"Yes, that's exactly what I did when he started following me around and attached himself to me like a leech."

"—but now, now you're going to make him deal with cancer again."

Derek blows out an exasperated breath through his teeth. "What do you want me to do, fire him?"

Lydia gives him the most scathing look Derek's ever been on the receiving end of—and he's counting every demon he's ever come across. "You can't fire someone you didn't even hire and who you don't actually pay." She shakes her head, slumping and looking tired all of a sudden. "You can't do anything, and that's why I'm so angry."

"What's the prognosis?" Derek asks her. 

Lydia rubs her eyes. "The oncologist will be here in--"

"Lydia."

She sighs. "The masses in your lungs have already metastasized, and it's too far gone for any treatment to be effective." She looks at Derek with a vague shade of pity shining through the miasma of anger. "You've got two months, at most, and it's not going to be pretty. You probably only have a week before you start coughing up blood."

Derek braces his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands. "Shit."

*

After the hospital, but before meeting Stiles at the Cathedral, Derek goes to see Lydia's ex-boyfriend, who's a lawyer. She must have anticipated Derek's request and spoken to Jackson already because he has a packet waiting for Derek. Lydia's knowledge of Derek's assets is a bit frightening, but it seems to have expedited things to the point that all Derek has to do is sign on some dotted lines, for which he's grateful.

It's a simple document, the will. That's apparently how it goes when you leave everything you have to a single person.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles is waiting for him outside of the Cathedral, hands fisted in the pockets of his hoodie.

Derek steps up beside him and asks, "Where's the Jeep?"

"It's home." Stiles' eyes narrow. "Where I expected you to be when I woke up."

Derek ignores the implied question. "Have you been inside already?"

"No," Stiles says with an annoyed sigh. "I wasn't spending a second more in his presence than I had to, okay."

Derek cups a hand around the back of Stiles' neck and practically drags him through the entrance. It's always like this when they have to come here. Derek would leave Stiles out of these visits altogether but Stiles needs to know how to navigate this. Especially now that Derek...won't be around to help in the very near future.

The Cathedral is large and imposing, with high arched ceilings, marble floors and polished oak all over the place. The pews are empty but for a few individuals with their heads bowed in silent prayer. To the left there's a wide corridor that leads into the Cathedral's mid-sized library. It's where Gabriel holds court, and he's there at an ornate table, hair pulled back into a slick bun, petite figure clothed in a custom-fit designer suit in charcoal gray with a lavender shirt and complementary tie.

The closer they get to Gabriel, the more Derek can sense Stiles' annoyance and vague anger. Deaton is a powerful being, someone who used to stand strong against dozens of full blooded demons on his own and come out on the winning end, and Stiles is comfortable—if frustrated—in his presence. 

Gabriel, though, puts Stiles on edge and infuriates him in a way that Deaton doesn't.

Gabriel looks up as they draw close, his eyes falling immediately upon Stiles before skittering across Derek's chest knowingly. Fuck it all, it's like there are no secrets. About the only one Derek's been able to keep in the dark about his impending death is Stiles.

"Stiles," Gabriel says warmly, eyes shining with a hallowed light at the centers.

"Ms. Morell," Stiles says in return, with not a little cynical bitterness.

Stiles always calls Gabriel that but has never explained why. Derek can extrapolate a bit, based on Stiles' mutterings about high school. It's more worrying now, given recent events, than it used to be. Being a person of interest to an angelic influence maker is not of the good, as Derek knows from first hand experience.

"Deaton told us to speak with you," Derek says.

Gabriel's eyes linger on Stiles for a moment more before he drags them away again to focus fully on Derek.

"And why is that?"

Derek lets a pause fall into the air, waiting for Stiles to say something, but he doesn't. 

"Because Stiles' real name is Zdzisława," Derek says.

Gabriel jerks. It would be barely perceptible in someone else, but Gabriel always maintains an aura of self-contained control, so it stands out. 

"You didn't know?" Stiles asks. He sounds incredulous. "When Deaton made a deal of it, I thought you knew and that was why..."

"All of your school records had your first name listed as Stiles," Gabriel says. "How would I have known?"

Derek sends a curious look at Stiles, because now that Gabriel mentions it, Derek realizes he has seen Stiles' driver's license. His first name is listed as Stiles on that, too.

"I got my name legally changed when I was fourteen."

Gabriel dips his head. "Which is why it wasn't to be found in your high school files." He leans back and studies Stiles enigmatically. "This is interestingly unexpected."

Stiles makes a noise. "Really? Really? Could we please have less completely cryptic bullshit and more explanations? Maybe?"

When Gabriel stands, his wings force themselves into Derek's sight, even though he's not looking for them. They're a grand wingspan, befitting the stature that comes with his name, and they are as terrifying as they are full of grace. 

"No," Stiles snaps at Derek's side. "I'm not some dumb sixteen year old kid who doesn't know you for the glorified influence peddler you are." He steps closer to the table that Gabriel is still behind, and looks at the angel with such furious contempt that Derek flinches at the force of it even though it's not even directed at him. "I'm not afraid of you, Ms. Morrell. Put it _away_."

Gabriel is frozen, tense and taut as if poised to strike, and Derek holds his breath. He's been on the receiving end of Gabriel's displeasure before, has pissed him off more than once. There's a lot Gabriel can do that doesn't violate the rules, that isn't out of bounds, but which is still really unpleasant. Derek wants about none of it directed at Stiles. Ever.

Gabriel stands down, though, in the face of Stiles' righteous fury, with a twist of his lips that is less than pleased. "There are rules. There are lines I cannot cross even if I wanted to."

"And we all know you don't," Stiles says with a sharp grin.

"True enough." He looks from Stiles to Derek. "There's not anything I can tell you, or that you can learn on your own. Not unless you wake him up, Derek Hale. Wake. Him. Up."

Derek blinks and he and Stiles are outside of the cathedral, Gabriel's voice ringing in his ears, the meaning impossible. Stiles is already awake. Stiles sees the cards, can pick out half-breeds of both sides faster than Derek can, and finds patterns and significant details in apparent chaos.

...Stiles also doesn't wear a triquetra of any sort. Ever. 

Stiles turns around to go barging back in, but Derek grabs his arm. "Come on. I need to think."

*

Stiles wanders the loft restlessly while Derek uses the pull up bar in the bathroom doorway, does push ups in the living room, and curls himself up in crunches by the sofa. Derek can feel Stiles' gaze on him but he ignores it, just pushes his body until his mind goes gloriously blank and all that's left running is his subconscious. 

When Derek stops abruptly and gets to his feet, Stiles looks at him expectantly, but Derek shakes his head. He goes through a warm down and then showers. 

When he comes out, Stiles is chewing on his thumbnail and staring out of the large Gothic windows along one wall. Derek moves up behind him and looks out at the city line.

"You never look at the cards," Derek says quietly.

Stiles jumps. "What?"

"At Deaton's, you never look but you always get it right."

"I don't--"

"It's not just that, though. There's been times when you've noticed a half-breed before it was in your line of sight, and you knew what kind it was, too."

Stiles turns around but doesn't step back. Neither does Derek. They're so close that Derek can't even look comfortably into Stiles' eyes. 

"I'm not sure what that means," Stiles whispers.

"When Gabriel stood up, what did you see?"

"Ms. Morrell calling up power."

Derek sets a hand along the side of Stiles' face. The tips of his fingers are at the corner of Stiles' eye, his palm riding the curve of Stiles' cheek, and his thumb is stretched along Stiles' jaw bone. "What did you see with your eyes, Stiles? Tell me what he looked like when he stood up."

Stiles frowns. "I—like Ms. Morrell."

"You didn't see wings?"

Stiles' eyes go wide and he swallows. "No. Was I supposed to?" He sucks in a breath. "Is that what you saw?"

Derek closes his eyes, leans his forehead against Stiles' and says, "Shit."

*

Ten minutes later, Stiles is sitting, statue-like, on the sofa, ready to talk after having processed what Derek pointed out.

"I don't understand."

Derek crouches in front of him, hands resting on the sofa on either side of Stiles' knees. "All these things you sense and know, you should be seeing them, too. The images on the other side of the cards, half-breed characteristics, lines of connection between pieces of information. They're not just gut-feelings."

"How did I not know I was untapped? How did _you_ not know?"

Derek licks his lips. "The only explanation is that you're really powerful. Powerful enough that even unawakened you outclass a lot of other psychics."

Stiles buries his face in his hands. "That's not good."

Derek squeezes his eyes shut and digs his fingers into the material of the couch. "The more powerful the psychic, the harder it is on them. Not to mention whatever the bigger-picture thing is that's going on."

"Derek." Stiles lifts his head and stares at him with wide, panicked eyes. "Derek, what if I turn out like Matt?"

Some people lose themselves to the gift, to the voices and intuitions and knowledge. Others embrace it righteously or neutrally. But some, some spiral out of control and give themselves over to the darkness, fall down a rabbit hole of bad, wrong, and evil. Matt was one of those. He had so much anger and pain in him, and when his eyes were opened to the not-so-mundane, he veered towards the demons. He colluded with the half-breeds and went on a killing spree with the unnaturally bright eyes of an unholy zealot. 

On the surface, it might not make sense that Stiles is worried about that, considering he works against the demons, even if he doesn't trust the resident angelic higher-up. But there's a streak of practicality in Stiles that has the potential to be dangerous in a bad way, that could take him down a divergent path without him realizing it.

"That's not going to happen." Derek takes Stiles' face in both hands. "You're better and stronger than Matt, okay?"

Stiles' nostrils flare and his eyes narrow. "Tell me you won't let it, that you won't let _me_."

It takes everything Derek has not to flinch at the demand, at the realization that he won't be there for Stiles in the long term—or even the extended short term. But he can make other arrangements, he can put Lydia and Boyd and everyone he knows on alert and have them watch over Stiles when Derek's gone. He can, and he will.

"I won't let it," Derek says. "Won't let _you_."

Stiles closes his eyes briefly, reaches up to squeeze Derek's wrists in gratitude, and then exhales. "Okay. Good. Next up: why the fuck did you fill the bathtub up with water?"

"I--"

"Because if you think, for one second, that I'm going to blindly do what that feathered asshole apparently wants me to do, then I question both your intelligence and your knowledge of me."

Derek considers the stubborn glint in Stiles eyes, lowers his hands from Stiles' face and sighs. "I'll drain the water."

*

Derek calls Erica and Isaac while Stiles pulls twenty books off his shelves and tries to figure out what's going on. Derek doesn't tell him it's pointless, given that the only clue they have is Stiles' true name, because sometimes Stiles just needs to be doing something.

Erica and Isaac show up about an hour after Derek calls them. Isaac is carrying a leather doctor's case with him, and holding Erica gently but firmly by the elbow. Erica is already in bad shape for not wearing her triquetra. She's tearing at her hair, mumbling nonsense, and staring off into the near distance at things only she can see. 

Derek hates that he had to ask her to take it off, that she's like this because of his request, but he knows that she wouldn't have done it if she didn't want to. She used to have a thing for Stiles, and then she had an anti-thing for Stiles, and now the two of them have a bit of an odd sort of friendship based on insults, shoves, glares, and comics. Derek doesn't get it, but it does mean that Erica was willing to do something she normally never does, which is open herself up to the patterns and currents around her to find one in particular.

When Derek shuts the door, Stiles looks up and makes a small noise. He scrambles to his feet and hurries over to Erica. He strokes her tangled hair back from her face and takes hold of her hand, drawing her away from Isaac. 

Derek watches Stiles murmur soothingly at Erica and settle on the couch, and then turns to Isaac. He's already at the table, bag open, and a few things pulled out.

"What have you got for me, Isaac?"

Isaac shrugs and points at what he's laid out. "Bullet shaving from the assassination attempt on the Pope. Holy water ampules from the River Jordan. Screech beetle from Amityville—like nails on a chalkboard to the fallen."

Isaac makes an aborted motion towards his bag at the same time that he sends a fleeting glance at Erica.

Derek braces his fists on the table and leans over it, towards Isaac. "What else."

Isaac shifts on his heels and sends another look in Erica's direction before reaching into his leather satchel. He withdraws a cylindrical tube and stares down at it.

"I was holding onto this for a big money buyer." He glances at Erica for a third time, then meets Derek's eyes and holds it out. "She dug it out and made me bring it with me. So, here. My last cache of Dragon's Breath."

Derek takes it almost reverently. Dragon's Breath is rare and powerful, and Isaac has only been able to get him small amounts of it, for a hefty price, a few times in the years they've been doing business. What Derek has in his hands is no small amount, and it's coming to him free of charge.

"Thank you."

Isaac looks troubled. "I wouldn't be that thankful, if I were you. If she thinks you need that in your arsenal..."

Derek winces. "It's going to be bad. Yeah."

A glance at the sofa has Derek upgrading it from "bad" to "fucking terrible." Erica has ten books open in front of her—three that Stiles had already pulled, and another seven from the shelves—and she's starting at them unseeingly even as she turns pages and runs fingers down lines of print. Stiles is sitting next to her, his profile drawn in sharp, tense lines.

Their eyes meet and Derek hates the helplessness he can read in Stiles' expression, tries to send back ruthless confidence to bring the Stiles he knows to the forefront, the one who sneers at Gabriel's all-seeing eye, who rails at Deaton for his unhelpful neutrality, and who goes at demon half-breeds with equal measures of fear and bravery.

It works to a point. Stiles looks less like he's waiting to be a victim of something, and instead becomes someone ready to stand his ground. It's not everything, it's not a Stiles who is ready to win, but it's closer.

"Back to Deaton's?" Stiles says.

Derek thinks that over and nods. "Yeah, let's go."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING NOTES** : This chapter features a couple of things that might be triggering.
> 
> 1\. Discussion of Kate/Derek relationship when Derek was underage (the relationship and outcome is the same as Teen Wolf canon events).  
> 2\. Mention of the Hale House fire.  
> 3\. Mention of Derek's suicide when he was a teenager. This parallels the movie canon for John Constantine.
> 
> If you have questions about how any of these play out, please feel free to ask.

They're halfway to Deaton's, making their way down a quiet street in which half the shops are boarded over, when the Jeep just...stops. It slows to a crawl first, the dash lights fading out, and something in the air makes Derek's hackles raise. 

He cranes his neck, looks up and down the street, and sees the lights going out on either side of them, the darkness coming closer and closer to box them in.

"—gassed it up yesterday!" Stiles is saying.

"Out," Derek says. "Out. Now."

Stiles jerks his head around, then follows Derek's gaze. "Oh, shit. _Shit_."

They scramble out of the car and turn in a circle, looking around for something, anything. Stiles pulls at his arm. "There."

The lights in front of a neighborhood shop whose storefront is filled with novena candles and statuettes of Mary aren't going out. They are, in fact, blazing brighter and brighter as the darkness hurries to them.

When the streetlights in their immediately vicinity flicker out with an ominous buzz, which seems to swallow every bit of ambient noise around them, Derek reaches into his pocket. He shoves the screech beetle box at Stiles, who takes it with a shaky huff of air.

Derek wraps a cloth around his one fist, a strip from the real Shroud of Turin, and fishes in his other pocket until his fingers find cool metal. He carries his lighter, still, something which Stiles gave him shit over--"It's a temptation, Derek!"--but which he'll probably be grateful for in about ten seconds.

He pushes Stiles back into the brightest are of the circle of light surrounding them, and then flips the lid of the Zippo just as the air picks up with wind and noise.

"Wings," Stiles says sickly. He fumbles under his shirt and tugs out an ornate cross Derek's never seen before. It flares even brighter than the light from the shop. He clutches it in the hand not holding the screech beetle at the ready.

"And talons," Derek adds with a nod, and steps in front of Stiles. He flicks the lighter, touches the flame to the cloth, and thrusts his fist into the air. There's screeching screams, a burst of furious kinetic energy that's sinister and demonic even in its unseen state.

Behind him, Stiles is shaking the beetle, creating a noise that makes Derek's teeth itch. Isaac was right, though—it's worse for the _thing_ surrounding them. 

Between the fire, the screech beetle, and the holy glow from the cross at Stiles' neck, the hoard scatters. It leaves behind the bilious scent of brimstone, and the lights flash to life again in a sudden, blinding burst accompanied by Stiles' retching. He never has gotten the stomach for brimstone.

"That was a demon," Stiles gasps after his latest round of heaving.

"I know."

"No, an actual demon. Not a--"

"I _know_."

*

"Impossible," Deaton says, composed as ever.

Stiles, still pale-faced and reeking of vomit, steps forward with a glare and sneer. "I think we know the difference between influence peddlers and actual demons."

"I definitely do," Derek says. It's a reminder of what lies in Derek's wake, the wretched sordid tale that he's never told Deaton but which the other man has always just known in that way of his. 

It makes Deaton pause, ever so slightly, and meet Derek's eyes. 

"I need the chair."

"No."

"Are you fucking out of your mind?"

The responses come simultaneously, Deaton's one word exasperatedly amused—like Derek is some sort of ridiculous child—and Stiles' wordier exclamation irate and terrified.

Derek keeps looking at Deaton. "There's something going on and we need to figure it out in time to stop it. It's big, Deaton. I've felt it for weeks and there are some heavy hitters involved."

"Not only would it probably kill you," Deaton says, "but it would require my breaking my oath of neutrality."

Stiles makes a barely muffled sound of disgust. "Not that I want you to let this asshole use the chair, but your neutrality is a joke right now. There was a demon on the streets, right out in the open. Ms. Morrell didn't hint at what we should do, he told us. The only one still playing by the rules is you, and it's going to cost everyone."

Deaton rises behind his desk, an aura of power extended from him and filling the room, but he hesitates and narrows his eyes at Stiles. "What did Gabriel tell you to do?"

"Apparently, I'm not active. He told Derek to wake me up."

Deaton actually rears back, the most over emotion Derek has seen him display in more than a decade. "What."

There's something coming together behind Deaton's eyes, something that makes his glance roam to the door leading out the club. Derek makes the connection as soon as he follows Deaton's gaze.

"They've been looking for him," he says.

Deaton nods. "I think so, yes."

Stiles groans. "What do you mean, they've—oh. Oh, oh, oh. All the humans we saw! They're recently activated newbies. Someone's been waking up psychics hoping they were...me?"

The way Stiles' voice trails off uncertainly, with shades of fear, has Derek shifting closer to him until their shoulders brush.

Deaton nods, seemingly reluctantly.

"Why?" Stiles asks. "What's so—am I powerful or something? What is it about me that's got soldier demons saying my name when they're trying to chew their way out of kids? That has a fucking archangel taking interest? That's bringing full-blooded demons to a deserted street?" 

Deaton doesn't answer. Derek reacts almost too late to keep Stiles from scrambling across the desk. He holds Stiles around the middle, steps back enough that there's no chance he can get to Deaton.

"Thank you," Derek says, with as much disgusted sarcasm as he can inject into the words, as he carts Stiles towards the door.

Stiles is yelling. Yelling at Deaton, who could probably kill them both from a great distance with just a thought and a breath. He's yelling about being neutered, about being cowardly, and Derek isn't sure they're actually going to make it out of the room. Deaton's face is screwed up in fury, his hands twitching at his side.

Derek would pass out in relief when they make it through the door unscathed, but Stiles is still struggling against his hold, still yelling pointed truths in Deaton's direction. So he steels himself, carries Stiles through the empty club and out the main door. He doesn't release Stiles until they're at the Jeep. By then, Stiles has worn himself out and is small with defeat and impotence at everything around him.

"Look at me," Derek says.

Stiles does.

Derek licks his lips and remembers how Stiles came into his life, a cloud of chaos that Derek had no hand in causing and just had to brace himself for. He remembers the first time Stiles called one of his plans shit, laughed when Derek said there was no other way, and proposed just that. 

"You taught me there isn't only one way to get something done," Derek tells him.

Stiles closes his eyes, breathes deeply in and out, and leans into the hold Derek has on his arms. "Yeah." He opens his eyes. "Okay. Yeah. So, alternatives. Let's brainstorm."

They toss out some half-hearted ideas neither of them is really sold on as they settle into the Jeep. Then Stiles braces himself and pointedly doesn't meet Derek's' eyes. "The half-breed demon, from the last time at Deaton's. What about her?"

Derek feels like he's been punched in the lungs, the air driven from him and leaving him choking and trying to remember how to breathe.

"Kate," he croaks out when he gets enough air.

Stiles nods, still looking through the windshield as though there's something fascinating about the car in front of them. "Kate. Yeah. It seems like you have history, and her presence here is...it's one too many coincidences for me."

Fuck. Derek swallows convulsively so as not to be the second one puking tonight. Stiles bobs his head awkwardly.

"You just, uh, get your head around talking about it. I'll drive us home." He pauses. "Should I send Erica and Isaac away?"

They left the two at the loft, since Erica wouldn't be torn away from the books. Derek doesn't want either of them near when he talks about Kate. "Yeah."

Stiles bobs his head again. "Okay. I'll do that."

By the time they arrive at the loft, the drive having been made in silence, Derek isn't any closer to being ready to talk about Kate. He's less likely to puke, but he's also more likely to collapse in a heap of erratic breathing, so that's maybe not the improvement it seems to be.

Stiles doesn't let him out of it, though. When he shuts the door behind them and looks at Derek, there's nothing but steely determination in his eyes. It's softer than it could be, Derek supposes, tempered with the understanding that Derek would rather do anything other than talk about this. But it doesn't give him an out.

Stiles is really good at forcing people to face shit about themselves they'd rather not. Derek admires it more when it's directed at people other than himself.

Derek looks around the loft, stalling for time. Erica left five or so books strewn across the sofa, with what seems to be the rest of Stiles' entire library surrounding it. Stiles is going to be annoyed as all get out when things settles down and he has to sort that mess out.

"Come on," Stiles says. His voice is quiet but unrelenting. He leads Derek to the kitchen area, and the two-person counter height table situated near it. He pours Derek a drink—whiskey, neat—and mixes one for himself. 

Derek sits across from him, unsure where to start. He downs the drink and decides the beginning is the best place. 

"I met Kate when I was fifteen," he says. As hard as it is to force those initial words out of his mouth, getting them out is like breaking a dam. From there, everything else spills out of him without control or moderation.

Derek tells him about Kate being a lifeguard at the pool he practiced in. About how she worked so hard to successfully convince his younger self that demon half-breeds were sometimes terribly misunderstood. How she insisted she was different.

He talks about how she got close to him, about the way her hands lingered and her eyes drifted until Derek gained enough courage to lean in and press his lips to hers. How he found her true face beautiful because of what he felt for her.

Then he talks about the fire. About his family dying. About her mocking laughter.

"I got the tattoo after that," Derek says.

Stiles doesn't have a poker face, and his expression is twisted up with a number of emotions. Derek can't identify them all, can't parse what they mean, but he doesn't have to: Stiles' hand on his, on the table between them, speaks volumes.

"I didn't want to see anymore," Derek goes on. "I wanted to block all of it out, constantly."

Stiles' brow furrows. "It's a triskelion, right?"

Derek nods. Stiles has seen it any number of times over the last year, the swirling pattern interrupted by scar tissue. "It's a three-fold symbol. It works like triquetras. It shut it all down. I felt like I was...free."

Derek stops there, unable to figure out a way to go on, to tell the rest of the story. Stiles squeezes his hand.

"It's broken," Stiles says. Prompts, really. "It doesn't work anymore because of the scars."

Derek nods.

"What—was it Kate who did it?" Stiles asks.

Derek's hands, even the one under Stiles', clench into fists. "Yeah. It was Kate. She...she sent some people after me. Influenced them into—it was a beer bottle. It broke the symbol. She came to gloat when I was in the hospital."

Stiles sucks a breath through his teeth but doesn't say anything, doesn't react otherwise. Derek is grateful for that. He doesn't think Stiles would blame him, or tell him he was dumb for falling for Kate and her lies. But he couldn't stand to hear sympathy or pity, either. There's only so much peace Derek can make with himself and it's fragile and unsteadily balanced. It wouldn't take much to topple and Stiles tends to be too much on a good day. Derek's only glad that Stiles seems self-aware of that tonight.

"There was lot that went into the tattoo," Derek finally says. "It was large. It was powerful. The breaking of it is just as large and powerful."

Stiles' eyes narrow. He hears under the words Derek has said, reaches for and easily grasps the barely disguised truth Derek is only alluding to. "Are you saying that you can't block it now? That no triquetra or threefold symbol will work because of the broken one on your skin?"

Derek nods.

Stiles' hand tights painfully on Derek's before he jerks it away and shoves back from the table, out of his seat. He stalks a few feet away and turns, giving Derek his back. 

"I'm going to destroy Kate," Stiles says. "I'm going to send her back to Hell and I'll laugh the whole fucking time."

Derek trembles. "Stiles..."

"No. No, Derek. Don't try that. That thing doesn't get to walk around in human skin after what it did to you. And there's more, I know there is."

Stiles never forgets that the bodies of the half-breeds are just costume, that they aren't people. Derek clings to that, uses it to give himself distance and breathing room for the next part.

"Kate didn't stop there. Once I got out of the hospital, it was like I was surrounded by half-breeds. Demon half-breeds. They were everywhere I turned."

What Derek doesn't say is how they taunted him. How they'd sit next to him on a bus and whisper terrible things into his ear, things that preyed on every bit of insecurity and guilt he carried with him like an immeasurably heavy weight.

"It was intense," Derek says. "I couldn't handle it. Eventually, I--"

Derek can't go on, can't get the words past the lump in his throat. Stiles is back at the table in three heartbeats, eyes wide and shocked.

"No," Stiles says.

Derek nods. "Yeah. I couldn't. Okay? I just wanted it to stop."

"You tried to kill yourself," Stiles whispers, his voice barely an audible breath of sound.

Derek stares down at the table. "I didn't just _try_."

He can hear the click of Stiles' throat in the silent room. "How long?"

"Four minutes. I was dead for four minutes."

Those few minutes were a lifetime in Hell. Derek isn't one to dwell—if he did there'd be no time for anything else—and it sometimes feels like a dream, but he remembers. He remembers every second of it.

Stiles drags himself back into the chair. He folds his arms on the table, then leans down to press his head in the cradle of them. "It's not fair. It's not fucking fair."

"I chose to do it, Stiles."

"But you wouldn't have if that thing--"

"Peddled influence," Derek cuts Stiles off. "Kate didn't break any rules. I hate to say it, but it's the truth. I just--"

"No. No, you were a _child_."

"Our opinions don't matter on the subject," Derek says, because this line of conversation isn't going to get them anywhere, isn't going to change the truth of Derek's eternal damnation on account of having taken an innocent life—his own. "It is how it is. I've accepted that."

Stiles lifts his head. "No, you've resigned yourself to it. There's a difference. We both know you don't--"

"Stop. I don't...just stop. There's nothing to be done about it."

Stiles opens his mouth, but shuts it abruptly. His lips tighten until the pressure whitens them. It says everything Stiles has agreed not to say. Derek can take it that way, as long as he doesn't have to hear it.

"So what's Kate doing back?" Stiles asks.

Derek stares at him, nonplussed, then gives himself a shake. He tries to think, get himself back on track. "She, uh, she was connected to Argent Industries."

Argent Industries is the playground of any number of half-breed demons because influence isn't just wielded on a person-to-person level. It can come from something larger and more insidious, like a conglomerate monster of the capitalist machine.

Kate was part of it even back when Derek knew her; the local pool was an Argent Industries funded project. Given that half-breeds are creatures of habit, Derek has no doubt that she's still aligned with them. 

Stiles nods, just once. "Okay. We can figure out what to do with that tomorrow. Tonight, I think we're done."

Derek slumps in relief. "I'm going to shower."

*

Derek stays in the shower for forty minutes, which is about thirty minutes more than usual. He'd stay in there longer, but Stiles' threshold for indulging Derek's terrible tendencies of self is low. Hence Derek's enforced smoking cessation, and vegetable consumption, and red meat ban.

Stiles is sitting on the sofa when Derek comes out wrapped in a towel. He doesn't look up, just nods absently while staring at the floor, then gets to his feet and passes Derek on his way into the bathroom.

Derek dresses and straightens up some of the obviously discarded books. He's replacing the last of a stack when Stiles emerges again, having washed up and brushed his teeth but not showered.

There's something determined and resolved on Stiles' face, a set to his expression, a glint in his eyes, that has Derek pausing by the shelves, tense and expectant.

Stiles strides across the living area and doesn't come to a stop until he's invaded Derek's personal space bubble, is so close that Derek's bare chest sucks at Stiles' body heat like a leech.

"Derek. I—you--"

Stiles never fumbles for words. Not when it's important. He uses the time when he's going on about random, unimportant stuff—or when he's shooting sarcasm like bullets—to process the important shit. Derek's never seen him come at something significant without having words at the ready. Not until now.

The rarity of the occurrence imbues it with a sense of meaning that Derek is unprepared for despite the weight of what he shared with Stiles not an hour ago. It makes the air around them thicken and grow heavy, until Derek feels like he's back in the shower and inhaling thick swaths of steam.

"Stiles..."

"No, shut up, don't."

Stiles surges forward then, closes the small distance between them to press his lips to Derek's. It feels like reaching for a door handle in the winter, like an unexpected shock that startles and stings but not enough to take away from the energizing thrill of it all.

They hold there, paused within the eye of that electrical storm, and then they move at once.

The kiss is _too_. Too forceful, too needy, too fraught with everything that's been growing between them since then met. 

It's perfect. Perfect in the way it doesn't work at first, not really, not until they both pause, regroup, and start again while their lips are still touching. It's even more perfect then. Stiles' lips are smooth, his mouth mobile and sinful. Derek falls into it helplessly, worn down by a year of sharing space with Stiles, of sharing a life with him.

It's everything Derek couldn’t bring himself to think he could have, the slide of Stiles' tongue against his own, his lips bracketing Derek's, and the way they step into each other until that last bit of distance between them is obliterated. 

Derek is lost then, can't hold himself back. He reaches out with greedy hands, slides them up Stiles' sides and then down his chest. There's lean muscle under Derek's fingers, a hidden strength most ignore or are blind to. Derek knows, though. He's seen Stiles stand up to agents of both sides, on the defense and offense, and come out worse for the wear but still steady on his feet.

It's like Derek is drinking it down from Stiles' mouth, absorbing it by way of his hands through a layer of material that he works his way under until his fingers are touching nothing but skin.

Stiles gasps into his mouth, reaches reflexively for Derek's shoulders, and digs his fingers in like unrelenting talons. Derek leans into the touch, wanting nothing more than to be pierced and caught, a physical manifestation of the the claim Stiles has laid on him emotionally.

They come together like an inevitability that could have been wrong or terrible at any other time, but is right and true in this moment.

They reach out at the same time, both of them impatiently tugging clothes away, the barrier that they've kept up even as this built between them. They tear it down, tear them off, and tumble onto Derek's bed. The bed in which he's slept for the last year, just feet from Stiles on the sofa, while _wanting_. 

Derek presses him into the mattress, tears his mouth away from the addictive high of Stiles' lips, and works his way down. Stiles tastes good and beautiful, so unlike the bitter and sour taste of Kate that once coated his tongue.

Derek revels in it, licks it into his mouth and moans. Stiles' dick should taste the same—it's just skin after all. But it's accompanied by the heady scent of male musk. The scent mingles with Derek’s' sense of taste so that his mouth waters, saliva pooling on his tongue until he sucks Stiles' cock into his mouth, down his throat.

Stiles moves under his mouth and hands like a rushing stream into which a pebble is tossed. Derek is the pebble in this particular metaphor and he sucks harder and longer, until Stiles loses sense of his kinetically rushing motion and is nothing but responsive ripples.

Derek is heady with the power to redirect Stiles' current like this, is maybe even a bit smug. He works Stiles with his mouth, insistent and avid, until Stiles spills across his tongue with a shout of surprise, and it was over quickly but Derek can't begrudge him that.

Stiles paws at him clumsily, before the aftershocks have even faded, and drags Derek up, undulates against him.

It's Derek's current that trips up then, that gives way to the motions of Stiles' pebble. Derek thinks that this is what it should be like, reveling in each other and losing a singular rhythm, falling into one influenced by the other. 

It's so far from what he had with Kate that the distance can't be measured. Kate controlled everything, set the stage and tone and motion, and all Derek could do was conform or risk the cutting curl of her lips, the saccharine-sweet scathing commentary that fed all of his insecurities in a backhanded manner.

From Stiles all he gets are words of enjoyment and honest pleasure. They move in counter-synchronicity, meeting each other at their peak of motion, coming together seamlessly and without forethought. Stiles is soft, has positioned himself so that Derek isn't overstimulating him, and Derek can just rut against Stiles' abdomen and lose himself in the pleasure.

"No, wait," Stiles says. His hips jerk out of rhythm, pull away from Derek. He stretches a hand towards the rickety bedside table. "Do you have lube? I want you to fuck me."

Stiles is tight and hot and smooth inside, but he gives so beautifully to spread of Derek's fingers. The noises he makes are more humbling than a choir of angels, and his blissed out gaze is more hallowed than anything else Derek has ever seen.

By the time Derek slicks himself up and presses inside with his cock, Stiles is trembling. Derek isn't much better. 

They cry out when Derek bottoms out, when he's inside of Stiles as fully as he can get. They pull back at the same time, the drag of Derek's cock inside of Stiles making them both gasp. And Despite that Derek is on top, and is the one penetrating, he's not in charge. Neither is Stiles. It's a mutual taking, an act which has them each piercing something delicate and fragile inside of the other. 

Derek comes first, goes still when he's buried to the hilt inside of Stiles.

Stiles doesn't let him revel in it, doesn't let him recover. He curls a hand around his own dick, puts his heels to Derek's ass and urges him to keep moving while he's still hard, then while he's only half hard, until Stiles shoots all over himself and Derek.

*

Derek wakes a little after noon. Stiles has beat him up for the first time since moving in. The room smells of waffles and syrup, and Derek stretches luxuriously, lets himself have this moment because he knows it can't last. Not with the life they live.

Stiles brings him breakfast in bed. They feed each other from the plate, syrup catching on their skin and sticking them together. Stiles lets them have breakfast and a brief but satisfying round of frottage before he puts distance between them.

"What now?" he asks.

Derek shoves down the way he's mourning the loss of Stiles pressed against him and thinks it through. Thinks about what he would do if it was someone besides Stiles gaining interest.

"Argent Industries," Derek says. "Let's pay them a visit."

Stiles nods in agreement, but bites his lip before blurting out, "You should swing by Hell before we do that."

Derek thinks it over. "Good idea."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings:  
> 1\. minor ableist language use.  
> 2\. Kate Argent, and associated grossness that comes with her.

Derek doesn't cross over to Hell very often. It's easier for him to do it than it is for most people. Not only because he knows how, and has the talent, but because he's been there before. That's part of the reason why he usually resists this kind of shit. Another part is that every damn demon he's deported seems to know the second he crosses over and comes for him. The icing on the cake is that Lucifer himself has it out for Derek on account of how many kinks Derek's thrown into his plans, and how many minions he's taken out of play.

Going to Hell is never a safe prospect, but it's less safe for Derek than it is for practically anyone else. Stiles seems to be remembering that, suddenly, after being the one to suggest it. 

"This was a terrible idea."

Derek steps up to where Stiles is standing. He cups a hand around the side of Stiles' neck and lightly kisses the hinge of his jaw. "Wait in the hall, Stiles."

Derek walks to the folding chair they've pulled out of the closet and sits, feet spread around a roasting pan filled with water. There's a label affixed to the side that reads "DO NOT USE FOR FOOD" and which always makes Derek have to bite back a smile.

"Derek, maybe--"

"It's okay. Just wait out there." He puts on his best reassuring smile. "This'll only take a second."

Stiles' mouth pinches tightly until the edges of his lips go white. "Keep treating me like I'm a clueless newbie and I will piss on your pillow, I swear to fuck."

Derek's smile shifts into something more genuine and a few degrees wider. "It's your pillow, too, now."

"Asshole." Stiles jerks forward and leans down to press his lips hard against Derek's. When he pulls back, he glares at Derek and says, "Don't come back more fucked up."

Derek doesn't say that it's not possible for him to be more fucked up than he already is. He's said it before and listened to Stiles explain in great detail how, exactly, he could be more fucked up. Neither of them enjoyed that. Well, okay, Stiles probably liked making the pie charts and Venn diagrams. And Derek maybe enjoyed mocking him. 

"Stop grinning like that," Stiles says as he backs away.

Derek, despite what he's about to do, despite the masses sitting in his chest like lead and ticking down his seconds, chuckles. "Get out of here."

"Wait, you need--"

"I've got it covered. Go."

The timing is perfect. Just as Stiles is tugging the door closed enough for it to latch, Derek sets one of his bare feet into the pan of water.

The other times Derek's done this, he's needed something. Something significant, something owned, something connected. In most cases it's a cherished possession. If the person he's trying to help has a cat, he uses it, because cats have half a paw in Hell just by their nature.

Stiles doesn't have a cat, but he does have a small collection of personal items, which have found their way into the loft, which would suffice. 

Derek doesn't use any of them. He doesn't need to.

All he needs to do is close his eyes, inhale, and then exhale. There's a sickening lurch that comes with the exhale, one that makes him feel like all his internal organs have been turned inside out. When he blinks his eyes open, he's there. Hell.

Hell isn't a separate place, something other. Hell is overlaid on the world. So when Derek stands up, he's in the loft, which is ravaged and torn apart, broken and destroyed like everything else in Hell. The difference is sharp and jagged, painful when considered in another context, so Derek shakes it off and looks around.

His eyes finally land on a book, sitting squarely in the center of the floor. It's charred black, but there's something sticking out of it, something fluttering in the brimstone winds that tear through Hell constantly. 

Derek plucks it out. It's a partially burned picture. He recognizes a young Stiles, figures the two adults bracketing him are his parents. The father's face has been burned away. The edges of the mother's face has been warped by heat. Derek tucks the picture into his jacket and makes his way downstairs.

He doesn't have much time before something sniffs him out and swarms of soldier demons come tearing after him. He lets the wind take him, focuses on where he wants to go, and ends up in a town not too far from Beacon Hills, at the house that's in the background of the photo.

Derek blinks and then stumbles. The house is intact, an oasis in a hell-blighted landscape. The air around it warps and he gasps because that—that is a _hallowed light_ in _Hell_.

The door opens and a soldier demon comes out it. At first glance it seems like any run of the mill soldier demon, but when Derek pushes himself closer he can see there's a difference, that this one is... _other_ among others. The thing's face splits in what's meant to be a smile, and then it pulls back its arm and tosses something at Derek, something small that hits him dead center in his chest—he clutches it automatically—and propels him back into the loft, in the human world, in a sickening push.

Derek is on his hands and knees, vomiting into the roasting pan, when Stiles tears back in. 

"What—you never—are you okay?" he asks, fluttering to the side, away from the puking.

When his stomach is empty, Derek tips to the side and curls up in a ball. That was the worst trip out of Hell he's ever taken. Ever.

"Derek, what should I do? What do you need?"

It takes another minute or so before Derek can make his body work well enough to shove himself over. He holds out a hand and Stiles takes it, pulls Derek to his feet even though he's got about as much strength as a kitten right now. Stiles settles him on the sofa and then holds Derek's face in both hands, frantically looking him over.

"I'm okay," Derek croaks. "Get me water. Something for my mouth."

Stiles goes off, taking the roasting pan into the bathroom with him and gagging all the way. It's amusing enough that Derek smiles pitifully.

Stiles comes back with a large bowl, a glass of water, and a bottle of mouthwash. Derek cleans his mouth out, spits into the bowl, and then drinks the water down in one shot.

Stiles is an impatient little shit most of the time, but he lets Derek take twenty minutes to get his twitching body under control before he starts in on the questions.

"What did you see? What happened? You've never reacted like that? Do you know what's going on? What does it have to do with me?"

Derek reaches into his coat and pulls out the photo. The scent of sulfur turns Stiles' face green, but he swallows it down and reaches out. Then his face pales and he stares at Derek with eyes wider than kid in that photo.

"Derek. That's. That's me and my, my parents."

Derek lifts up his right hand, which has been curled into a fist since he was in Hell, and uses the fingers of his other hand to pry it open. The object sitting in the palm of his hand is a ring. There's no scent of sulfur coming from it.

Stiles inhales sharply. "That--" He turns the photo towards Derek, points at where his mother's hand rests on his younger self's shoulder. The ring is there. On the third finger of her left hand.

Derek's already had time to put the pieces together in that regard, to recognize the barest glimpse he got of the ring as it hurtled towards and connect it to the one on Stiles' mom's finger.

He's more concerned with something else. He touches the ring with a single finger, nudges it so that the intricate symbol carved into the top of it is displayed. "Do you know what this means?"

Stiles stares and shakes his head. "Do you?"

"No."

*

Isaac stares at the ring when he and Erica arrive. "Oh."

Derek steps into his personal space. "You know this?"

"No. Yes. I mean. I know the symbols. See here?" He traces a line in the air above a section of the ring. "That's a divine sigil. But here." He traces another line, which interconnects with the other. "That's demonic."

"I don't recognize either of them."

Isaac shakes his eyes, eyes still narrowed on the rings. "No, you probably wouldn't. These are, fuck. Derek, these sigils are older than old." He looks at Derek, shaken and pale. "These aren't human sigils."

Derek jerks his hand back, curls the ring protectively in his fist. "Shit."

"What does it mean?" Stiles asks from behind him.

Derek and Isaac both startle and turn to face him.

Isaac shakes his head helplessly. "I don't know."

Stiles' jaw tightens. "Find out. However you need to do it, do it."

*

Erica and Isaac leave, Erica with another armful of books from Stiles' library, and Isaac with the photo for reference purposes.

Derek takes Stiles' hand and tries to press the ring into it, but Stiles pulls away. "No, I can't. Can you hold onto it for now? Keep it safe?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I can." Derek tries to wrap it in the last shred of the Shroud he has, but the material catches fire. They stare at it blankly. 

Derek unearths a length of white silk and wraps the ring carefully. He threads the material through, winding it around the circumference until it resembles a silken ring, all of the metal hidden. Derek ties several knots along the way, then wraps the ring some more until it appears to be a white square of silk, nothing more, and then tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"We should get ready to storm Argent Industries," Stiles says and starts for their supplies closet. 

Derek tugs him back, brings him in close, and leans in. "In a bit," he says with his lips a hair's breadth from Stiles'. 

They make out on the couch, and it's an end in and of itself, rather than the start of something. Stiles is lean and strong under his hands, and Derek's fingers are greedy for the feel of him.

They fall into a dazed state, lose themselves in a moment that feels like it's been removed from time, and there's nothing but this, their mouths and their tongues and the way Stiles wraps himself around Derek, and the way Derek holds him tightly. They doze off a bit, wake up when the sun is going down, and Stiles brushes a kiss to the side of Derek's neck before untangling himself.

"Time to get ready."

*

They're loaded down with supplies when they pull into the underground garage at Argent. It's late at night, well after the offices have closed down, but there are still lights at the top of the building.

"Kate," Derek said when they noticed them upon arrival. Of course she'd be on the top floors. 

Derek has his preferred gun, fashioned from a powerful relic, and loaded with special rounds he made from the Dragon's Breath Isaac gave him. He has too many vials of holy water to count. And he has Stiles, just as armed and dangerous, at his side.

Stiles takes them through the building effortlessly, knowing when to go, when to stop, when to duck, and when to change course long before Derek knows. Derek's not sure why he had to be forced to recognize that Stiles is several levels above him and the other psychics.

They come into a small office and Stiles points at the wall opposite of them. Derek takes aim with the gun and pulls the trigger. The Dragon's Breath eats through the wall easily, moving slowly but steadily until it breaks through the other side and explodes outwards and leaves behind a massive hole.

Derek and Stiles step through and there's Kate. She's been tossed back onto a conference table and is laughing.

"Really, fire? I know it's a thing for you, but I was born of--"

Three small marble-sized ampules of holy water slam into her face, one after the other. Derek arches a brow at Stiles, who is glaring death and torture at Kate.

Kate hisses, patches of her human skin melting away in a haze of smoky brimstone, then cackles. "I like the natural look better, actually." She winks at Stiles. "Thanks, kid."

She moves fast, so fast it's a shock even to Stiles, who reacts with another ampule a split second too late. She wraps a demonically strong hand around Derek's neck, jars him hard enough that he drops the gun, and slams him into a mirrored wall. His feet leave the ground and she pins him there. Derek struggles in her grip, trying to pry her hand off and kicking at her weakly with his feet.

"Mm, yeah, I always did love it when you fought, baby." She leans in close and licks the side of his face. "Do it some more."

Stiles is scrambling for the gun, but Kate reaches out with her free hand, turns her head and smirks. "I don't think so," she says and then Stiles is flying across the room and against another wall.

While Kate is gloating, Derek reaches into his pocket and slips his hand through a blessed set of brass knuckles. He catches her in the chin with the hit when she turns back to him. Derek doesn't pause, doesn't take even a second to recover his breath as she's stunned into releasing him. He just hits her again, and again, and again, until she's laid out on the table, most of the skin of her face smoking. There are imprints of the cross from the knuckles pressed into her natural form, at the height of her cheek and next to her mouth.

Derek casts a glance around for Stiles, who is getting to his feet and leaning heavily against a wall, his head bleeding profusely.

"It's fine, get what we came for," Stiles slurs. 

"What do you want with Stiles?" Derek asks Kate.

"What don't I want?" Kate says. She licks her lips with a forked tongue and thrusts her hips up. "He's a sweet little piece of meat. But I don't have to tell you that, do I, Derek? I can smell that sweetness all over you."

Derek climbs up on the table and straddles her thighs. She laughs even as he jams the blessed symbols of the knuckles against her throat. "Tell me."

"Or what? You'll send me back to Hell? That's not the big deal you seem to think it is. I mean, even if you survive what's coming, I know I've only got—what, a month or two until you're six feet under? Lucifer said he's going to collect you himself, and then I'll have all of eternity to get my payback. "

"Shut up!" Derek can't help the way his eyes cut to Stiles for an instant. 

Kate laughs again. "He doesn't know? Oh, that's so noble of you, Derek. Why don't you let me up? Go talk to your boy, enjoy your last little bit of time alive."

Stiles stumbles to them, drags himself onto the table, and curls his lips at Kate. "How about we do it another way?" He pulls a small, battered bible out of his back pocket and flips it open. "How about I grant you so much fucking absolution that your demony ass takes the elevator up?"

Kate's laughter fades and the smirk slides away. "What?"

Stiles' responding smile is hard and ugly. "I think an eternity in Heaven is exactly what the doctor ordered here, you vile piece of shit." He stands up, towering over Kate and Derek, and starts reading, loud and strident, full of righteousness, and his free hand tracing the sign of the cross over Kate.

"You little fucker," Kate hisses at him, then looks at Derek. There's fear in her eyes, something he never thought he'd see. "Stop him!"

Derek tilts his head. "You gonna talk?"

"Yes!" 

Stiles stops and watches her carefully.

"Not that it matters," Kate goes on. Her voice is getting more sibilant, her human skin and demonic body flaking away under Derek. "There's nothing you can do. Stiles is the beget and they're going to use him."

"For what?" Derek asks.

Kate's eyes close in something like sexual anticipation. "Demons stay in Hell, angels in Heaven. Except there's always a loophole, isn't there? Sometimes it's built in, but sometimes it's an unforeseen consequence of something else." Kate reaches out and touches Stiles' ankle. "You're gonna gives us this plane, kiddo, and it's going to be awful."

Stiles jerks away and Derek has to tumble off of Kate to grab him, keep him from falling from the table. He helps Stiles down and steadies him.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Stiles says.

Derek curls his lips. "You're not. You're bleeding and you can hardly balance yourself."

"What did she mean? About seeing you in a month. What haven't you told me?"

Derek inhales sharply. "Not now, Stiles. We can talk about that later. We need to get out of here. Come on."

Stiles stumbles out of the room with Derek, then goes still. 

Derek tugs at him. "Come _on_!"

"Something—something's wrong," Stiles says. He sounds small and young. Derek turns to him and sees that he's shaking, one hand pressed to a spot right under his sternum. Then his eyes go wide and he's off his feet. Derek reaches out, tries to grab him, but only gets a hold of the ornate cross hanging from his neck. It snaps from the chain in his hands, and Stiles is gone. He's pulled through a fucking wall. And another. And another.

Derek tears after him, dodging through the holes in the walls in pursuit but he's slow, so slow, and he's still four walls away when Stiles crashes through the windows of the fortieth floor. When Derek gets there, Stiles is nowhere to be seen.

*

Isaac calls while Derek's driving through another neighborhood bordering Argent Industries, in the hopes of finding a trail.

"There's a story, in one of the pre-Christian texts," Isaac says.

It sounds like an oxymoron, but the denizens of Heaven and Hell had bibles and texts of their own long before Christianity actually gained roots in the human world.

Derek grits his teeth and fights with the Jeep's clutch. "Tell me."

"An angel and a demon fell met and they fell in love. They wanted to be together but couldn't because neither could enter the others' home. The angel petitioned, uh, an archangel for help."

"Gabriel. It was Gabriel, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. Gabriel agreed to help and gave the angel a set of rings that would allow the angel and demon both to exist in the human realm for a short period of time. They were still an angel and a demon, but they had no powers. At the end of the time, the rings would disappear and they'd be brought back to their own realms."

Derek thinks of the house in Hell, of the soldier demon at the door. "They were changed, though."

"Yeah. One of the drawbacks. The angel went to Heaven with the touch of Hell on it. Demon to Hell with a touch of Heaven. They were both shunned and outcasts and could never really return to what they knew."

"That happened thousands of years ago. How does this tie to Stiles?"

Isaac takes a breath and then there's a commotion on the line and Erica takes over.

"Ten years there, and in ten years gone," she chants in Derek's ear. "Back home but never home again."

"Yeah, I know, Isaac told me."

"Not barren but fallow." Erica laughs, melodic and disjointed at once. "Fallow not barren. Not barren but fallow. Fallow not barren."

"Shit."

Isaac wrestles the phone back. "She's been doing that for the last hour. I've hit a dead end, Derek. Stiles can probably--"

"They have Stiles."

Isaac goes silent. In the background, Derek can hear Erica growling. "Oh no."

*

At Deaton's, Derek doesn't bother with the bouncer or the card, just tosses a punch that lays the guy out and then shoves his way through the door. The place is empty; expected since it closes at dawn. Derek strides through the main room and this time, for the first time, the door swings itself open before he even gets to it. 

Deaton comes around his desk when Derek storms in, starts to say something, but Derek kicks him into a wall and puts the gun to his chest. "I need the chair."

Deaton's eyes widen in fury and then suddenly it's Derek against the wall, and Deaton's fucking fingertips are embedded in his torso. 

"I don't tolerate these antics of yours, Derek, as you well know."

Derek spits at him, then screams when Deaton twists his hands. "They have Stiles! They took him right in front of me, damn it!"

Deaton narrows his eyes, twists his hands again, and then pulls his fingers free from Derek's flesh and steps back. "In that case, you need the chair."

When Derek gets Stiles back he's going to admit that Stiles is right and Deaton is an asshole.

*

Deaton leaves Derek on a sofa in his office to recover while he does what he needs to do to prepare for the insanity that's coming. Derek slips a hand in his pocket and rubs his fingers over the silken square.

Deaton comes back into the room leading Isaac, Erica, Boyd and—oh, fuck—Lydia.

Derek covers his face with his hands. " _Lydia_?"

"Oh, don't even. I told you to watch out for him, and since you obviously can't do that on your own, here we are."

"Cheer up, loser," Erica says brightly. She must have her triquetra on again. "We brought weapons!"

Derek spreads his fingers and peers at the others. They're each holding a duffel bag up for him to see. "Fuck."

"We need to do this now," Deaton says.

He leads them through a hidden back door of his office, down a set of winding tunnels, and into a room that has the others shivering. Derek hasn't shivered in this room for a while. It's not that it's creepy. It isn't. Unlike every other room in the warren of corridors, it's brightly lit and clean. 

It's what's in the room that causes the shivers. The weight of the power of the artifacts and relics that Deaton stores here which causes the shiver.

Stiles never shivered. Not even the first time.

Derek's sometimes blind and dumb.

Deaton tugs a drop cloth off the chair, revealing it to them. It's wood and steel, and the power that comes from it is...different. A combination of angel and demon. Derek tucks his hand in his pocket again and touches the cloth covered ring.

"What is that thing?" Lydia asks.

Boyd crosses himself and bows his head. "The electric chair from Sing-Sing."

"The one that was used on over three hundred inmates?" 

Boyd nods. 

"What does it do?"

Derek cracks his neck and strips off his leather coat. "It's seen a lot of souls. You can ride them, with the chair. See things, go places, get information."

Lydia nods. "Sounds useful."

"It's only useful if he survives," Erica says. She rolls her eyes when Derek glares at her. "It's the truth, and you know it. Given how close to death you already are, the chances of you getting out of that thing are pretty small."

Isaac nods. "She's right."

Deaton stands there peacefully. "Derek is stronger than he realizes." He gestures Derek at the chair. "In."

Derek hands off his jacket to Erica, and Stiles' cross to Boyd, and closes the distance to the chair. He settles in and takes a breath. "Do it."


	6. Chapter 6

Deaton reaches towards a hook and takes down a bare bulb attached to a long plug. He twists the bulb until it lights and then motions at a bottle of noxious spirits sitting on a cabinet. Boyd passes it to him. 

"Are you ready?" Deaton asks.

Derek clenches his jaw and nods. "Yeah."

Deaton takes a swig from the bottle, swishes it in his mouth and then spits it on the floor. He murmurs something. Derek can't understand the words but he feels the power: protective and aggressive all at once.

With no further fanfare, Deaton spills out the rest of the bottle. It puddles around Derek, soaking through his shoes. Then Deaton touches breaks the light bulb against the floor and touches the live filaments to the puddle of alcohol and--

Derek is flying through time and space, riding soul after soul. Back through time, through events he already knows—Stiles being taken, the trip to Hell, the kid they exorcised. He branches off, then, doesn't keep going down his own timeline.

It's Stiles' timeline he's following, back-back-back at superspeed, with stops along the way. He sees Stiles, just nine, at the funeral for his parents. He sees Stiles, in the year before that, watching his parents die an inch at a time to two different types of cancer.

Back. Back. Back. Until Stiles isn't yet around and Gabriel is standing in front of the Stilinskis. 

"I thought I was barren. That it was part of the restriction--"

"Fallow, not barren," Gabriel says, one small hand spread across the space between Stiles' mom's hips. Derek feels a muted reverberation of power and knows that's the moment that Stiles comes into being.

Stiles' dad is standing next them, arms folded. Derek sees his ring glint madly. Mr. Stilinski turns his head, eyes flaring brightly angelic, and seems to be looking right at Derek.

Derek is pulled again, flies and flies, but it's forward again, this time along the Stilinskis' timeline. They love each other so obviously but what they feel for Stiles pales in comparison. They're talking one day, when Stiles is maybe three, and they're worried. So worried.

"I don't trust Gabriel," Mr. Stilinski says.

Mrs. Stilinski goes still, her eyes wide on her husband. "Then we need to figure something out." She turns her head until she's looking at exactly the spot Derek would be standing in were he really here.

Derek hears bits and pieces of plans that never get anywhere over the course of six years, and each time one of the Stilinskis looks at him.

Mrs. Stilinski dies in April when Stiles is nine. When it happens, Mr. Stilinski is in his hospital bed and, if Derek remembers correctly, just an hour or so from following after his wife. 

He looks at Derek again, something Derek is used to, but this time he speaks. He speaks to Derek. "My son shouldn't have ever been, but I can't regret him. He's both Angelic and Demonic, and also bound to Earth." 

Stilinski closes his eyes and swallows tightly. Then he looks at Derek again, eyes blazing, but this time—oh, this time it's not just a generic angelic light. No, it's more specific, it's the blue of the Archangels. Derek can't help but notice that it's brighter and clearer than Gabriel's blue.

"Whoever you are, I can feel him through you. I can feel the connection between you. It's pure and strong and it's going to be what saves him."

Stilinski's hands tangle together and then he holds a palm to his mouth and exhales—his final exhale, Derek realizes—and Derek is flung away, is pushed further into a current timeline.

There's a pool, large and full, and Stiles is unconscious next to it. There are figures around him. Derek is pulled at his gut, is tugged through doors and corridors. He's in a school. There are halfbreeds all over, waiting, protecting, guarding the pool.

One last push, this one reeking equally of breaths of Heaven and Hell, and Derek is back in his body, in the chair, convulsing with a hand clasped to his chest around a ring that matches the one in his pocket.

*

Boyd hefts Derek out of the chair. He feels charred from the inside out and his muscles are sore under his skin, weak and fluttering. Deaton presses a vial to Derek's mouth and forces him to drink it.

Back in Deaton's office a few minutes later, Erica rolls her shoulders and stares Derek down. "What did you learn?"

"He's a threefold figure by nature," Derek rasps. "Angelic, demonic and human."

Deaton closes his eyes and lowers his head. The glimpse of his face that Derek sees shows regret and self-recrimination. Good.

The others suck in a breath in reaction, except for Lydia who is staring at Derek with narrowed eyes. "What does that mean?"

Boyd is the one who answers. "It means he's connected fully to all three realms, so he could conceivably break down the barriers between any of them."

Lydia transfers her intense attention to Boyd. "How?"

"I'm not sure. No way good."

"By waking him up, to start with," Derek says. "Activating him will open his connection to all three realms."

Erica makes a pained noise. "But it won't break down barriers. They would have to--" She cuts off, eyes closing and throat working as she swallows. "They would have to--"

Isaac touches her arm; she leans heavily against him and hides her face in his shoulder. "They'd have to make him do it. Stiles is stubborn and strong-willed, but when you wake up, it's disorienting and you sort of lose your mind a bit. They could mess with his head and get him to do what they want."

"The question is," Deaton says suddenly, "which realm do they want to connect to." When everyone looks at him, he raises a placid brow. "Kate was clear evidence of demonic participation in this plot, but we can't ignore that Gabriel took specific action to insure Stiles' existence, nor that he told Derek to wake Stiles up."

"Are all of your rules actually guidelines?" Lydia asks Deaton, her voice sharp and her expression disgusted. "Is that why no one actually follows these supposed Accords?"

The look Deaton levels on Lydia has made powerful beings weep. Lydia just flips her hair back and curls her lips. On any other day, Derek would let it play out and watch the two of them parry and thrust their way through a bloody conversation. 

"Angels and demons have their own minds," Derek says, drawing everyone's attention. "They can choose to break the rules that their bosses agreed to. They can choose to work together. It's just...uncommon. But everyone guarding Stiles was demonic. There wasn't a single angelic entity there. I don't think it was a partnership. I think Gabriel was helping the other side. They're going to break down the barrier between Earth and Hell."

Isaac exhales sharply. "The Accords. That's--this is an _end game_. Gabriel's helping the other side win."

"We need to go," Derek tells everyone. "We need to save him because if they get him to do that he's not going to survive." 

*

Deaton's potion kicks in and Derek's body feels normal and strong again, except for the ever present weight on his chest that's like a clock counting down his remaining time. 

They're gearing up to go. Everyone brought weapons but Deaton also opened up his own small armory and began doling out weapons. 

Derek pulls on a clean set of clothes that Erica brought him. Deaton is examining the cross that Stiles was wearing right before he was ripped away from Derek at Argent's. 

Deaton looks at Derek. "Do you know what--"

"It's one of the crosses of Isteria," Lydia says. "It was part of his parents' estate."

Deaton folds his arms and eyes Derek. "Halfbreeds are most vulnerable when their outer skin has been compromised by holy water."

Derek nods. 

Lydia sucks in a breath. "Oh."

Erica glances up from glass jars of holy fire she's strapping to her waist. "Wait, what?"

Boyd has moved closer, one arm outstretched and his fingers twitching. "Some artifacts are so powerful that they can bless any water whatsoever."

"Any water can already be blessed," Isaac says.

Deaton wraps the cross in a swath of fabric, bypasses Boyd, and gives it to Lydia. "Not by the un-ordained."

Isaac uses the computer at Deaton's desk to pull up a blueprint of the school where Stiles is being held and they all take turns at the desk familiarizing themselves with it. 

Lydia and Boyd put together a plan in five minutes. It's a good plan, even if it's lacking in the flair Stiles usually imbues in his and Derek's plans. All Derek cares about is that it'll work, and he thinks it will. 

Before they leave, Deaton pulls Derek aside. "Let me see them."

Derek studies Deaton, who has gone impassive again, and then sighs. He pulls the wrapped ring from his one pocket then reaches into another for the second ring, the one that came back with him to the chair.

Derek unwraps Mrs. Stilinski's ring and then tips it into the palm of his other hand with Mr. Stilinski's. He tilts his hand so that Deaton can see them both.

Deaton's eyes do something. Something Derek's never seen. It's not like with halfbreeds, when something comes to life in the pupil. It's more like Deaton's entire iris flares an indeterminate color while the whites of his eyes bleed black. Within a second his eyes are back to normal, but Derek's breath is still caught in his chest at the demonstration.

"They say the Devil himself would collect your soul, Derek Hale," Deaton says with a small grin. "Must mean you're doing something right." He reaches up, slowly, and closes Derek's hand around the rings. "Keep it up."

*

The location Derek saw during his trip in the chair is a high school about an hour away in city traffic.

Derek drives everyone in Stiles' Jeep, Boyd in the passenger seat and Erica, Lydia and Isaac packed tightly in the back. It can't be comfortable for anyone but no one complains. Boyd chants prayers the entire trip, at first under his breath, but he increases the volume the closer they get to their destination.

"Scott should be here, too," Derek says under his breath, during a lilting lull of Boyd's voice. Lydia stares at him in the rear view mirror and opens her mouth, but Boyd's voice lilts upwards again and she doesn't have a chance.

When they arrive at the school they all tumble out of the jeep and stand staring at the large dark building in front of them.

"Everyone remember where to go and what to do?" Derek asks.

They nod and then, one by one, they creep away into the night to various points of entrances. Lydia is the last one to leave. 

Without looking at Derek she says, "Even if Stiles has to watch you die slowly and terribly over the course of years, he'd think it was worth it. That you were worth it. You're the second best thing to ever happen to him."

A lump gathers at the back of Derek's throat and he wants to cry. "Thank you," he croaks.

She nods sharply and then turns on her heel and heads towards the school.

Derek has five minutes before he can go into the building, per their plans, and he spends it praying like he hasn't in years, a ring held tightly in each palm.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress enough that this is not a death fic. Not at all. Not for anyone except Kate (previously) and a bunch of nameless halfbreeds. That being said, **please** read the following trigger warning carefully for your own protection.
> 
> Trigger warning: Suicide. This plays out just like John Constantine’s suicide near the end of _Constantine_. See end notes for more spoilery details if you need them or you can ask me and I can run it down for you.

Derek has the path of least resistance, the one he backtracked through in his vision. It’s a path of convoluted twists and turns, not to mention a trip up to the second floor that takes him halfway across the school only to bring him right back down to the first floor again. 

Before he exits the stairwell he tucks the rings into his jacket pocket. He pulls out his weapon--the same cross-bearing gun filled with Dragon’s Breath rounds that he brought to Argent Tower—and then, holding the handle of the door, he closes his eyes, reaches inside himself, and lets loose every internal damper he’s been able to maintain since the triskelion on his back was destroyed.

Derek’s dizzy when he opens his eyes, unaccustomed to being so receptive to everything that can be felt by his kind. It’s shocking. He didn’t realize just how much he’d learned to hold at bay over the years just as a matter of self-preservation. He should find it overwhelming and be huddled in a corner muttering to himself but he’s not.

Because like this everything is clearer, everything makes senses. Instinctively Derek is sure that it’s not the sort of sense he could articulate, only know. And he does, he _knows_. 

When Derek steps into the hallway he fires his gun before the first halfbreed is even in sight, the timing perfect. He steps over the body and turns the corner, ducking without knowing why and firing before his eyes have a clear target. Six, then seven, halfbreeds fall and Derek reloads on a pivot, dips to the side as he finishes, and brings the final three to the floor.

This was only the path of east resistance up to a point. 

There’s a set of extra wide double doors made of frosted glass in front of him. He shoves them open and strides into the pool’s anteroom with his gun lowered. There are dozens of halfbreeds in the room, standing between him and the flimsy swinging doors that lead to the pool itself.

As one they turn to him, a variety of bodies and faces and shapes moving in silently eerie unison. Derek grins at them and he knows it’s a feral, half-crazed expression, fueled by emotions these things have never known and, therefore, never estimate correctly.

“Hello,” Derek says. 

He snags a chair from against the wall and moves it to the center of the room. The halfbreeds are watching him, wary and waiting. 

“You have a choice,” Derek tells them as he climbs up on the chair and pulls out his lighter. “You can leave, right now.”

When Derek says nothing more, the halfbreeds exchange uneasy looks. 

“Or?” one of them ventures to asks.

Derek’s phone chimes once from inside his jacket--Lydia’s signal. “Or you won’t.”

None of them move.

“Suit yourself,” Derek says with a shrug and then he lifts the lighter and flicks it on right at the smoke alarm. 

It takes just a few seconds for the sprinklers to go off. Derek jumps to the floor as soon as they do. He tosses the lighter aside, slips on his brass-knuckles and strikes as the water that Lydia blessed rains down on the halfbreeds.

They rush at him, screeching angrily, but their skin is peeling and smoking, and Derek punches and fires, eyes falling closed as he ducks, weaves and darts blindly but with precision accuracy. Time becomes fluid and it feels like both seconds and days before he comes to a smooth stop and opens his eyes. 

There isn’t a single halfbreed left standing. Most aren’t even still there, the holy water and Derek’s attacks having compromised them so much that they’re nothing but ash and embers floating on air currents; the rest are following slowly but surely.

Derek rolls his head to crack his neck and then moves to the final barrier separating him from Stiles. The doors swing open easily when he pushes on them, the hinges catching to keep them wide open. 

The pool is large, taking up nearly all of the floor space, except for an area by a line of tinted windows. Overhead is a massive skylight, the pool area having been annexed on and having no basement under it, or second story over it. 

The stars are bright, despite this being Los Angeles, and Derek isn’t sure if he really sees one shooting across the sky, almost like it’s aiming towards the building, or if it’s just something he Sees that represents something else. It doesn’t matter so he looks away, not giving it a second thought, and eyes the room.

Stiles is several feet from edge of the far side of the pool, a bloody gash on his temple and an unfocused gaze that speaks to a concussion. Derek bolts around the pool and falls to his knees beside him. 

“Stiles, come on, we need to go.”

Stiles slurs out something that could be Derek’s name and tries to help but he’s uncoordinated and is a hindrance more than anything else. Derek finally slides an arm across Stiles’ back, grips under his arm, and yanks him to his feet. 

He starts them towards the doors but only makes it a few steps before something hits him hard and takes him off his feet. He lands flat on his back by the doors he came through, groaning through the pain. It takes just a few seconds to shove his jacket sleeves up to reveal the tattoos on his forearms, each of them half of a symbol.

Without moving from his prone position, Derek clenches his fists and brings his forearms together, chanting, “Into the light, I command thee.” Around him the air warps but it’s not enough. He grits his teeth, does it again. “Into the light, I command thee!”

This time when the air warps, it pulls something into focus: Gabriel. He’s hovering just over Derek, in his true form, the thin veneer of human fashion trappings gone in favor of the tunic tank and pants--white, made of a thick material--of the angels. His wings are spread out behind him and his hair falls in gentle waves down past his shoulders. 

“Derek Hale,” Gabriel greets him. “Poor little Derek, damned and broken, and trying so hard to buy his way into Heaven.”

Derek shakes his head. “Gave up on that a long time ago,” he says truthfully.

“Hm, yes, I see. You’ve been acting out of guilt all these years, haven’t you? Selfish acts are selfish acts, Derek, no matter the particulars.”

“Like I said,” Derek tells him with a humorless laugh. “Gave up on going anywhere but down.”

Gabriel smiles sharply. “You know what they say: when you’re going through Hell, keep going.”

Derek laughs again. “Yeah. I’ve heard that one.” He stares up at Gabriel and shakes his head. “Never expected you to cross to the other side, Gabe.”

Gabriel hisses, one small bare foot coming down to rest powerfully hard on Derek’s throat. “I’m not doing this for the other side. I’m doing this for all of _you_.”

Gabriel’s countenance shifts then, a hallowed smile overtaking his features. “You’re so beloved, you humans. No matter what unspeakable horrors you perpetuate, you need only repent-- _unselfishly_ \--and He will gather you to his bosom. It’s a gift, singular and unseen anywhere else in the universe.

Derek chokes around the pressure of his foot, which shifts painfully against his windpipe when Gabriel crouches down over him. “It’s not fair, Derek.”

When angels Fall, there’s no way back into His grace. Derek’s always kind of identified with the bitterness of that, even if his situation is of his own making--intent matters so much and he’s always been less pure in his than he should be. 

“I’m going to help you all, Derek,” Gabriel says. “All these years I’ve been tasked to watch you, to influence you, and I’ve learned. Humans can be so noble, but often it only happens when you’re faced with horrors.” 

Gabriel leans closer to Derek, brings their faces in too-close proximity, and waves a careless hand. Across the room, Stiles rises in the air and is tossed into the pool. “I’ll bring the horror,” Gabriel whispers “and those who survive, who rise above it, will be truly worthy of His love.”

“You’re insane,” a voice says.

Gabriel stands upright again, his foot finally moving off Derek’s throat. Derek scramble a little bit away and then follows Gabriel’s gaze. There’s another angel in the room, a Latino with a crooked jaw. It takes a second for Derek to recognize him, to match the face in front of him to the one pressed against Stiles’ on the wallpaper of Stiles’ phone. But even though the faces match it doesn’t make sense because Scott is Stiles’ friend--his best friend from childhood--not a _full-blooded angel_.

“Scott?” Derek croaks. “What…”

Scott shakes his head sharply. “Get him out of here. I’ll deal with Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s wings spread open even further. “Insolent child,” he snaps.

“Go!” Scott tells Derek.

Derek goes, diving into the pool on his side in order to swim at where Stiles is flailing on the other side, body jerking and twitching. Derek’s seen enough of their kind be woken up to know what’s happening. He swims harder and faster, coming up in front of Stiles and lifting as much of his body out of the water as possible. 

“Stiles, you have to fight it,” Derek tells him even as he awkwardly swims them towards the edge. “Close yourself off. You don’t want to wake up, remember?”

“Derek, I--my mom, I saw--”

They get to the side and Derek shoves Stiles out of the pool before heaving himself out as well. Stiles is still caught up in it, still on the verge, and Derek takes his face in both hands, tilts his head until their eyes meet.

“You _don’t want this_ , Stiles. Focus on that. Think it as hard as you can, as loud as you can, with as much power as you can: you don’t want this. Say it with me.”

Around chattering teeth, Stiles gasps, “I don’t want this,” along with Derek.

“Again.”

“I don’t want this,” Stiles says over and over again, stronger each time, and Derek knows it’s going to work, knows that Stiles can hold it back and stay asleep. He can tell by the way Stiles is more grounded in the present, is jerking around less, isn’t leaking brimstone any longer.

And then...and then it all goes bad. From behind them there’s an unearthly agonized scream.

Stiles freezes, eyes going wide, and shouts, “Scott!”

The scream cuts off with a gurgle and Derek knows without looking that Scott is dead. Stiles knows, too, going by the wretchedly furious heartbreak that overtakes his expression.

There’s no time for any real reaction. No one is distracting Gabriel anymore and his attention is on them in an instant. Stiles is ripped away from Derek yet again, landing dead center in the pool with Gabriel’s will holding him under. Gabriel’s wings take him to Derek, where he smirks and then blows a delicate breath in Derek’s face that packs enough force to blow him out of the pool room and into the anteroom, where he collides with the frosted glass doors and collapses in a hail of glass.

He lies there for a brief moment, stunned, and sees Gabriel fly himself over the center of the pool where Stiles has surfaced. 

Derek just needs a glance at his slack face to know that it’s happened, that Stiles has woken up.

Heaving in a breath, raises his eyes Heavenwards. “I know I’m lost to you, but I could use a little attention. Please.”

Nothing happens. Derek’s not surprised but he is bitter. Of course God ignores him, while the Devil pays Derek enough attention that he’d collect--

With a jagged intake of breath, Derek closes his hand around a shard of glass and pushes himself into a sitting position. He pulls his phone out and sets it next to him, displaying a running timer that's set up to show hours, minutes and seconds. 

Then he takes the glass shard to one wrist, then the other.

“Hurry,” he says, his eyes focused on where Gabriel has pulled Stiles from the pool and is kneeling in front of him and whispering intently. The doors swing closed after a second, blocking his view.

The closer Derek gets to death, the more time slows down, the seconds taking longer and longer to tick by on the phone screen. He’s counting on that, but it’s only part of the plan.

The other part shows up when time stops entirely. 

Derek’s eyes are about to flutter closed when he sees the timer on his phone stop, so he forces his eyes open and looks to a space to the front of him, where tar is appearing out of nowhere and dripping to the floor.

As Derek watches, a figure appears, not so much fading into sight as simple warping into view as though shouldering through the barriers between dimensions.

The figure hangs mid-air for a breathless moment before stepping forward and touching down ground with bare, tar-coated feet.

“Hey, Lu,” Derek says to the Devil himself. Derek isn’t really surprised by the face Lucifer is wearing: it matches the images of Gerard Argent, founder of Argent Industries, that are plastered all over their web site and the walls of the Tower.

Lucifer gives Derek a glittering smile. “Derek Hale,” he says with satisfaction and pulls over the chair Derek used earlier to sit. “The one soul I’d collect in person. As it were.”

“Yeah, that’s the word.”

“I must say, I’m surprised to see you making the same mistake twice.” Lucifer flicks his tongue out and tastes the air. “Is it the cancer? Terrible way to go and the treatments just make it so much worse. I’m proud of that one.” He sucks air between his teeth, eyes narrowing. “Or is it what’s about to happen? Trying to get ahead of the curve, avoid the apocalypse?”

Derek manages to smirk. 

Lucifer’s expression draws tight and his eyes go flat. “I’ve got plans for you, Derek. Kate’s going to help--she’s back home, you know.”

Derek didn’t know. The damage he and Stiles inflicted must have been enough to destroy her human skin entirely. “Can’t say I’m sorry about that.”

“She was, at first. She’s pretty happy to know you’ll be coming back, though. We’ve got so many delights waiting for you.”

“I’m honored.”

Lucifer stretches out a leg and nudges at Derek’s knee with a tar heavy toe. “We’ve got a trip to make. Going down. One way ticket. And all that.”

“Before that, I was thinking you might want to do something about what’s about to happen in the other room,” Derek says. Talking is hard but it isn’t getting more difficult, thanks to time being at a standstill.

Lucifer laughs. It’s a hissing sound, mixed with a cackle, and a plume of brimstone smoke wafts from his mouth along with the sound. “Why would I do that? It’s going my way, Derek, without a single violation of the Accords.”

“So you think.”

“So you think,” Lucifer repeats mockingly, voice high pitched, but he’s looking worried about the eyes. He seems to lean forward just an inch, but is suddenly crouched on the floor, leaning into Derek’s space so that they’re nose-to-nose. “What do _you_ think, then?”

“Not think. Know.”

Lucifer snaps his teeth in Derek’s face. “Don’t try that with me, you tiny creature. You’re not powerful enough to know on that level.”

“True. But I know Stiles.” He pauses. “Can you say the same?”

A spray of rancid spittle hits Derek in the face when Lucifer hisses at him. “You’re trying to con me.”

Derek shakes his head.

“Then what’s your angle?”

“Stiles. Whatever happens is going to destroy him.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” Lucifer laughs in his ear. “You can’t bear that. Still and always so selfish.”

Derek nods, suddenly accepting and at peace with that in a way he’s previously only pretended to be. “Yeah.”

“Fine.” Lucifer rears back and is in the chair again. He crosses his legs and spreads his hands out. “Wow me.”

“Gabriel. Ms. Morrell.”

Lucifer twists his lips and rolls his eyes. “Gabriel. What about Gabriel?”

“He posed as a counselor at Stiles’ high school.”

“Mm, yes, that school. Bit of a competition between Gabriel and one of mine--you might know him. It was your Uncle Peter.”

Derek feels like he’s been punched in the chest. Fuck.

“It was exquisite, the way the two of them influenced those vulnerable kids. It was Peter who was responsible for Mr. McCall’s human death.” He looks merrily at Derek. “Aw, you didn’t know.”

No, but it doesn’t matter. Not to this conversation. Maybe when Derek’s spending eternity in Hell he’ll have an opportunity to unpack that revelation and wonder just how much Stiles knew.

Probably not, though. 

“And Gabriel’s responsible for Scott’s angelic death,” is what Derek says in response.

Lucifer freezes, his neck craned forward, mouth open and eyes filled with pupil. He stares at Derek and then jerks into motion again, one hand cutting through the air dismissively. “Stiles is on the side of angels.”

That makes Derek laugh. If he had the breath, the life, it would be hysterical and manic. “Stiles,” he says through his amusement, “ _is a loyal little shit_. Gabriel’s competition with Peter killed Scott as a human; Gabriel himself killed Scott as an angel. I don’t care how disoriented he is when he wakes. If Gabriel is there, whispering in his ear to do something, he’s going to do the exact opposite just to screw him over.”

“And isn’t that what you want?” Lucifer asks.

“I want Stiles alive. He won’t survive either of those choices.”

There’s a frustrated, impotent fury in Lucifer’s expression, one that feels ancient and eternal.

“I can’t stop him from waking, it’s--”

“A violation, yeah. But _I_ can get him balanced so he doesn’t do either. You just need to deal with Gabriel.” Derek considers the scenario playing out in his head. “And make it so Stiles doesn’t know about--” He jerks his arms, drawing attention to his wrists. “--this until I get him squared away. It’ll set him off to know, and even I’m not sure which way he’ll tip.”

“This still rings of a con,” Lucifer says, his voice sibilant and furious.

“Look at him. See that I’m right.”

“My plans for you will seem like a vacation to what I’ll do if you’re trying to play me, Derek.”

Derek nods. 

Lucifer slinks to his feet and moves towards the pool room. When he gets to the doors, the glass in the windows surrounding them explode from an unseen aura of power. The glass hangs in the air, hardly moving to Derek’s perspective. Lucifer crosses the threshold between rooms, tarred feet crunching glass as he goes, and walks to Stiles and Gabriel.

Lucifer crouches down and tips Stiles face away from Gabriel, and then stares into his eyes intently. Whatever the Devil himself sees there makes him let loose a wet, hissing roar. He lifts Stiles in a bridal carry, then lowers his arms. Stiles remains hanging in the air but moves in Derek’s direction.

After Stiles’ body lands on the floor besides Derek, time starts again but only by the pool. 

Gabriel lurches forward on his haunches, surprised at Stiles’ sudden disappearance, and immediately notices Lucifer. He stands upright and stares down Lucifer with mad-bright eyes.

“Son of Perdition.”

Lucifer makes a rumbling noise of satisfaction. “The old names have such character, don’t you think?”

Gabriel draws his shoulders back, wings lifting high and powerfully. “I will destroy you, in the name of He Who is Holy!” 

Lucifer just grins.

When Gabriel strikes, a small hand barreling towards Lucifer with the power of God behind it, the hit doesn’t connect. Instead his fist stops mere inches from Lucifer’s face. 

“I don’t think He is backing your play anymore,” Lucifer drawls.

Derek isn’t sure what happens next, or how Lucifer does it, but Gabriel’s wings go from normal-looking to burnt-looking between one second and the next and Gabriel is barreling towards the pool. When he lands, the water bursts up towards the ceiling, like a focused tidal wave, only to come crashing back down into the pool.

Lucifer pivots on his heel to face Derek and Stiles, and makes a small motion with his hand.

Time is moving around Derek again. Stiles is no longer frozen still but is gasping and staring sightlessly at things Derek can’t even begin to guess at because Stiles is...Stiles is so beyond Derek in power--though not knowledge--that it’s not even funny.

Derek panics for a moment before he realizes that reality has changed. He knows and feels like he’s taken a glass shard to his wrists and bled out while waiting for the Devil himself to show up, but his body doesn’t at all look like that, is moving as though that never happened.

“Hey, Stiles, look at me,” Derek says, lifting a hand to cup the side of Stiles’ face. With his other hand he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the rings. 

Stiles’s gaze is barely present when he meets Derek’s eyes. “I can’t--I see-- _Derek_.”

“I know,” Derek says. He lifts Stiles right hand and randomly chooses one of the rings. It must be Mr. Stilinskis’ because it’s large; Derek slides it onto Stiles’ middle finger. He takes Stiles left hand, then, and pushes Mrs. Stilinski’s ring onto Stiles’ pinkie.

Then, Derek takes Stiles’s hands in his. “Focus on me, come on, Stiles.”

It seems like it takes exorbitant effort, but Stiles manages, his amber eyes locking with Derek’s.

“Derek,” Stiles says.

“Hey.” Derek squeezes Stiles’s right hand. “Heaven.” He squeezes the left. “Hell.” He lifts both sets of joined hands to Stiles’ chest and taps it. “Earth. Threefold. A living, breathing triquetra. Rein it in, Stiles. Pull it back and control it.”

Stiles tries. Derek can tell. But something isn’t working because he gets only so far before his eyes lose focus and he’s shaking under Derek’s hands.

“It’s not--no--wrong--I--” Stiles stammers.

“Concentrate, Stiles,” Derek tells him. “You can do it. Heaven, Hell, Earth. It’s in you, it’s your natural state of being. Just let it happen.”

Stiles shakes his head frantically. “No, not enough, all gone, all dead, not true, I need--oh.” He surges up, lips touching to Derek’s, and Derek’s mouth falls open. Stiles sighs into it. “Yes. This. Yes.”

Derek can’t feel it but he can sense a lock catching in Stiles and knows that Stiles has done it, has brought it under a fierce control that even the most seasoned psychics can’t hope to obtain.

When Stiles pulls back, he’s himself again. “Hey,” he says to Derek.

“Hey,” Derek replies just as time freezes again. Derek fights against entropy to lower Stiles to the tiled floor so that he won’t fall when time starts again. 

As soon as Derek gets Stiles settled, his wrists once again become torn and bloody, and he collapses onto his back. Lucifer is watching him when Derek looks towards him.

Derek arches a brow and Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. What do you want from this--more time?”

It’s tempting, Derek won’t say it isn’t. More time to make his life right, to find a way to be welcome in God’s house, but...he’s done with that. “Scott,” he says.

“What about him?”

“Bring him back. You can do it.”

Lucifer tips his head back, with aggravation, and huffs out a breath. “Fine.” He waves his hand. “Done.” He claps his hands together. “Off we go, then.” He reaches for one of Derek’s hands, clasps it tightly, and begins dragging Derek off.

Things take an unexpected turn after a few moments, when they’ve gone only about a foot. Derek suddenly feels as though he’s glued to...not the floor, but this dimension. He’s no longer being dragged, even when Lucifer puts more muscle behind it, uses both hands to try to pull Derek along and down.

Lucifer tries even harder and loses his grip in the face of the power of the force working against him. As soon as Derek is loose, he begins to ascend. A bright, hallowed light surrounds him and, above him, he can see God’s house, shining and beautiful.

Lucifer snarls, teeth bared. “The sacrifice,” he growls.

Derek considers that as he floats higher and higher. He sacrificed more time, a cure for his disease, or any number of things in favor of Scott’s life, in favor of something to ease Stiles’ pain. It’s the one unselfish choice he’s made since his family burned. 

He laughs, the sound echoing with Grace, and leaves the Devil in his wake.

At least, that’s what’s meant to happen. Lucifer has other ideas. “No,” he snarls and wraps his arms around Derek, pulling him back to this dimension. “You’re not getting away so easily.” Lucifer tears Derek’s shirt open and then plunges his hands into Derek’s chest, up to the wrist. “You’re going to live, Derek. You’re going to live and screw up and be mine again.”

Lucifer digs around in Derek’s chest, under his ribs and in his lungs, and it’s an agony Derek remembers from his time in Hell, all those years ago when he gave up, gave in, and took his own life for the first time.

Derek screams and screams until Lucifer abruptly yanks his hands out of Derek's chest. Derek tumbles to the floor, stunned. His wrists are whole. His blood is back in his body. And the masses in his lungs are...in Lucifer's hands, smoking and vile.

Lucifer tosses them aside. "You're going to live, Derek, and I'll be back for you."

Time starts again, completely and everywhere, when the Devil shoulders his way back out of this dimension.

Derek stays collapsed on the ground and passes out.

*

He wakes to a crowd of people. Boyd, Isaac, Erica and Lydia are all there, looking worse for wear but all of them alive. Scott is there, too, wings tucked up against his back and grinning at a wide-eyed Lydia.

And Stiles. Stiles is there, one hand pressed to the wound on his head, and the the other waving around madly as he rants and paces.

"—killed himself, Scott! To _death_. Don't tell me to calm down! That is unacceptable. I can't. Not him, too? What if..."

Scott looks away from Lydia. "Aww. Come here." He wraps Stiles in his arms, wings folding around them, and looks at Derek over Stiles' shoulder. "It's okay, dude. He's fine. He was always going to be fine, trust me."

"He didn't know that," Derek hears Stiles mutter.

"Nope. But you would have done the same thing, so give him a break."

Lydia notices Derek is awake and kneels next to him. She's got ash stuck to her eyelids and the front of her shirt is drenched. "Hey," she says quietly and runs a hand over Derek's hair. "You're incredibly dumb but _thank you_."

"Who's first?" Derek asks. "You said second best to happen--"

She smiles. "Me, of course." The smile falls away, leaving an awestruck expression. "I might have to readjust that list on account of McCall." Derek forgets sometimes that Lydia was in high school with Stiles and Scott. She obviously was just as in the dark about Scott as Derek was, though. 

Stiles pulls back from Scott and notices that Derek's conscious again. He looks furious and terrified and relieved. All Derek can do is sit up and hold out his arms. Stiles dives at him, taking them both back to the ground.

"You're such an asshole," Stiles says, face buried against Derek's neck. "Why did you think that was a good idea?"

Derek gives him the only answer he has. "I love you."

Stiles clutches him harder and Derek feels tears against his skin. "Unfair, you fucker. God. I love you, too."

Derek hugs him back just as hard and mouths a grateful prayer against the crown of his head.

"We should probably get out of here," Boyd says from where he's huddled close to Erica and Isaac.

Derek and Stiles get to their feet, still tangled together, and everyone is turning to go when they hear something behind them.

They look and see Gabriel hauling himself out of the pool, wings burnt and broken off at the root, exposing jagged bone. He stands unsteadily and takes a few, bumbling steps.

Derek's eyes go wide. "You're--"

"—human," Stiles finishes and then bursts into laughter. "Oh, man, this is perfect." He looks at Scott. "Was this your doing, dude?"

Scott grins. "Nah, came from higher up, but I support it a hundred percent."

They high five.

"Stiles," Gabriel says with desperate hope. "Stiles, I've caused you so much pain. Don't you want to repay me in kind?" He tips his head back, pushes out his chest. "Do it. Kill me. I know you want to, you've wanted to for years."

Stiles laughs again. "I wanted you dead, yeah, but this is so much better. Like, you don't even have gifts, you know? You're a completely vulnerable human and everything in this city knows your face. You're going to feel exactly how we felt in high school."

Gabriel looks to Derek then. 

Derek shakes his head. "You know what they say. When you're going through Hell, keep going."

Stiles, Scott and Lydia all laugh that time. Then Scott steps up to Gabriel and touches his forehead briefly. There's power behind the touch but Derek can't tell its purpose.

"What did you do?" Isaac asks.

Scott shrugs. "Stiles was right about everything knowing his face, so I fixed that. Some of us will still know, but, yeah."

"Scott," Stiles whines. "Why are you a fun ruiner?"

"Comes with the wings," Scott says with a dimpled smile. "Let's go."

They take a direct route out of the school and exit through the main doors. While Derek was taking the clearest path to the pool and Lydia was making her way to the basement, Isaac, Erica and Boyd each had an entrance to hold. They dealt with the halfbreeds stationed there and kept them from converging on Lydia, Derek or the pool.

The main doors were Boyd's. The floor is littered with ash except for an area, a perfect circle, which is clear. Boyd, Derek notices, seems ruffled but has no injuries and carries not a single flake of ash on his person.

Isaac and Erica stare from the clear spot to Boyd, impressed. Boyd just lifts a brow. "I'm not _just_ a priest."

"No one here is just anything," Erica says with an eyeroll. "Move it. This place is giving me the creeps."

Outside, at the bottom of the steps, Deaton is waiting for them. He looks them over and shakes his head. "What a sorry sight."

Stiles opens his mouth but Derek claps a hand over it. He keeps his hand there until Stiles settles with a glower and slumped shoulders. Deaton's lips curl in a small smile, then he sobers and dips his head at Stiles.

It's all they'll get from Deaton, and it's more than Derek expected. Stiles sighs heavily and nods. "Yeah, okay, we're good."

The doors open behind them and Gabriel comes out, moving down the steps like a newborn lamb. Despite whatever Scott did, Deaton recognizes him immediately.

"Marrin," Deaton says faintly.

"Alan."

Deaton shakes his head and then blows a handful of blue dust from his palm in the direction of the school. "To take care of mundane matters, like fingerprints," he says, then holds out an arm. "Come, sister."

Gabriel stumbles over to him, seeming for the first time as small as his petite stature, and settles in the curve of Deaton's arm. "Thank you, brother."

They walk away, leaving the others to stare after them with gobsmacked expressions.

"Nope," Scott says eventually, to the agreement of everyone else. 

They leave the school behind and the trip back is uncomfortable with so many of them crammed into the Jeep but no one complains.

 

*

When they get back to the loft in the late morning, Derek pushes Stiles down on the bed, opens himself with his fingers, and then slides onto Stiles' dick and rides him for an eternity, until they're both sweaty and sobbing and needful but still so unwilling to let it come to an end.

Derek comes first, finally, and slumps over Stiles' chest, heaving breath into his lungs. Stiles punches his hips up weakly twice, three times, and follows.

A lazy burst of happiness wells up in Derek and, as always, fast on its heels is a tide of guilt. He tries to push it away or down or somewhere not here, in his and Stiles' bed, but it's always been an impossible task. Derek's whole life since the fire can attest to that.

Stiles fumbles around, takes both Derek's hands in his own, and Derek can feel a pulsing warmth coming from the ring on Stiles' right hand. He looks up. Stiles' eyes have gone opaque white.

"There was never anything to forgive," Stiles says, voice distant. "They have always loved you. They want you to be happy."

Stiles blinks, amber filling his irises again. "Huh. That was weird."

Derek laugh-cries into Stiles' chest and it feels like a benediction.

*

A week later they're in Northern California, in a cemetery just outside of Stiles' childhood hometown.

The Stilinskis' graves are side by side and there were fresh cut flowers on each when they arrived. "I have a standing order," Stiles said as he cleared leaves from the grass in front of their headstones.

Derek has been waiting off to the side, giving Stiles time and space at the graves. Stiles has been sitting cross-legged and talking for over an hour, voice so low and soft that Derek can't hear more than the general cadence of it. Derek doesn't have a line of sight on Stiles' face, but he's been able to gauge his moods somewhat through the angle of his shoulders, the level of tension in his back, the set of his hands.

Eventually, Stiles pushes to his knees. He tugs off the ring from his right hand and presses it into the grass over his father's grave. He repeats the process with the ring on his left hand, this time with his mother's grave.

"Are you sure?" Derek asks again.

Stiles looks back at him with a smile, then holds out his hands for Derek to see. The rings have left raised impressions of themselves around the two fingers they were on. "I'm an innate threefold symbol. I don't even need this much, but a focal point is always useful."

He waggles his fingers and Derek, with an eyeroll, takes his hand and helps him stand. "You ready?"

Stiles turns to the graves again and nods. "Yeah."

They walk away, hand in hand. A few feet away they both go still, then turn around to look warily at the graves. There's nothing to see, even if something has drawn their attention.

After exchanging a glance they shake it off and keep walking. 

"We should see Scott when we get back to L.A.," Stiles says. "See how he's enjoying holding Gabriel's post."

"Yeah, okay."

*

At the Stilinskis' grave, two figures perch on the headstones, one angelic and one demonic. They stare at one another from a distance neither can cross. At some unseen signal, they each stretch out an arm and hold it over their respective graves. 

A ring rises from the grass of each grave and lands in their palms. They each make a fist around the ring and murmur something in a language that's not human.

They each slip a ring on the third finger of their left hand and the wind howls around them as they're tethered to a dimension they don't belong to. They remember this, from the last time, but something more happens, something that didn't last time. It goes further, deeper, and they move beyond tethered to integrated. 

They become human.

"No kids allowed this time around," Scott says from his perch on a nearby gravestone. "One Stiles is already literally too much for this plane of existence."

The Stilinskis kiss joyful laughter into each others mouths.

.End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: the suicide trigger warning: Derek commits suicide to lure the Devil to Earth, but does not ultimately die. I tried not to make this graphic, and because Derek’s doing it out of necessity and not desire there is no triggering suicidal narrative to go along with it. Still, protect yourself if you need to.


End file.
